tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44193598873732445122024-03-13T01:41:46.655+00:00Downed Robin
Today, I am two separate gorillas.Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.comBlogger1860125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-24646286340036774132023-08-08T20:57:00.003+01:002023-08-09T11:47:15.631+01:00Ecuador the recursive<p>Notice anything odd about the flag of Ecuador?<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghdeR5c5RgxM7HmH3wFWn5Bz2jXNYuGJI4ZtsPDodP7fCtAIJnpsaggqw5EH8Kc71TvSDMdnza0z14O8D1ajknqmttMVQtd9tdIq9etumUhl5WCQMGq3WohzHPz4crw1-WecCGLtw195hzvGmc70-NdaHbMZ52o-ZkSc5uPEenEpfsQke0X2fxZ4SUrM4/s4500/Ecuador.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4500" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghdeR5c5RgxM7HmH3wFWn5Bz2jXNYuGJI4ZtsPDodP7fCtAIJnpsaggqw5EH8Kc71TvSDMdnza0z14O8D1ajknqmttMVQtd9tdIq9etumUhl5WCQMGq3WohzHPz4crw1-WecCGLtw195hzvGmc70-NdaHbMZ52o-ZkSc5uPEenEpfsQke0X2fxZ4SUrM4/s320/Ecuador.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Apart from the busyness of the design, that is, and the now dodgy associations of the fasces. To be fair, there are a lot of cluttered flag designs featuring a coat of arms, and Ecuador's isn't the only coat of arms to still feature a fasces - there's one on Watford Borough Council's coat of arms, too. </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdXO1qTZ6ApMHb9-ZUucFA0V13I4Wmq9ILXGc00VsMPCnXLY3yiU5Y2B-dWf1RTywjcyJbUgDHk5E0P0ghMA_z-_K8v1wlYAhJaLE2E4uj7uiJzRe3F1G8OnLcjqXMvLkLr98SMpRn67C_JNPL8MV2s6gMmqZCGs-FEPuIiyySsS_gLXfV3I_HBg7Dq8w/s656/Watford.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="656" data-original-width="529" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdXO1qTZ6ApMHb9-ZUucFA0V13I4Wmq9ILXGc00VsMPCnXLY3yiU5Y2B-dWf1RTywjcyJbUgDHk5E0P0ghMA_z-_K8v1wlYAhJaLE2E4uj7uiJzRe3F1G8OnLcjqXMvLkLr98SMpRn67C_JNPL8MV2s6gMmqZCGs-FEPuIiyySsS_gLXfV3I_HBg7Dq8w/s320/Watford.jpg" width="258" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Watford Borough Coat of arms (image credit Heraldry Wiki contributor <a href="https://www.heraldry-wiki.com/heraldrywiki/index.php?curid=102515" target="_blank">Knorrepoes</a>)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table> <p></p><p>Spooky coincidence; the fasces-bearing arms of Watford Borough Council <a href="https://www.heraldry-wiki.com/heraldrywiki/index.php?title=Watford" target="_blank">were granted in October 1922</a>, the very same year and month when Mussolini marched on Rome and then took power in Italy.</p><p>Anyway, back to Ecuador's flag, and the oddest thing about it (in my opinion). Look at the coat of arms in the middle.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit4AFtig1GVeuFxTEnDF-cja1g3UQIqxIdkHuFpFUp8fVMBHfYC2zgNh39Yj_UY0GMA84evhijJoyABaqRGN_f1Kz6ex4BnyNfPHUKiH9sXyXsI7yoG1cPn52FuyzMtz443li0qgUD8mA3sIZJxwPs2gF_B8BgYZpkypZfqoqpdMu_J31RA2mqWXHpLmA/s1525/Ecuador%20arms.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1525" data-original-width="1271" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit4AFtig1GVeuFxTEnDF-cja1g3UQIqxIdkHuFpFUp8fVMBHfYC2zgNh39Yj_UY0GMA84evhijJoyABaqRGN_f1Kz6ex4BnyNfPHUKiH9sXyXsI7yoG1cPn52FuyzMtz443li0qgUD8mA3sIZJxwPs2gF_B8BgYZpkypZfqoqpdMu_J31RA2mqWXHpLmA/s320/Ecuador%20arms.jpg" width="267" /></a></div><p>The odd thing isn't the condor on top, the fasces on the bottom or the shield (?) depicting a sun, mountain, river and ship in the middle. It's what flanks the design; halberds from which are draped ... Ecuadorian flags. It's a flag containing little copies of itself. A recursive flag. A bit like <a href="https://surrealismtoday.com/the-droste-effect/" target="_blank">the Droste effect</a>, only not quite, with more than one small copy.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNCeQiaL5_TSgbWydwUzYXEwiZ3oIeQTkxobo4rDb82wychx234j9xHydN8vuYuD_Z2heWhj7ikXuW58ID4ZsFRPalYKM3nXBXbYhJHqCc_Pgj-rHxzYZEyeYq8Ryv63rBBYqZ_O9LzKHy3akXTEOYMhuUgXMPGRU9jBfUcT3SN9KXkcVKv9OD6S407QE/s1552/Droste_cacao.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1552" data-original-width="932" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNCeQiaL5_TSgbWydwUzYXEwiZ3oIeQTkxobo4rDb82wychx234j9xHydN8vuYuD_Z2heWhj7ikXuW58ID4ZsFRPalYKM3nXBXbYhJHqCc_Pgj-rHxzYZEyeYq8Ryv63rBBYqZ_O9LzKHy3akXTEOYMhuUgXMPGRU9jBfUcT3SN9KXkcVKv9OD6S407QE/s320/Droste_cacao.JPG" width="192" /></a></div><p>I'm now idly wondering whether there are any other flags which contain images of themselves. I think there probably must be some (although not necessarily national flags). My very quick web search hasn't turned any up, although it did come up with some recursive flags identified by Redditor and vexillology enthusiast <span class="flex gap-xs items-center pr-xs"><span class="flex-none neutral-content font-normal text-12"><span><a class="author-name whitespace-nowrap text-neutral-content a no-visited no-underline hover:no-underline" href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Cawren/">Cawren</a>. The trouble is, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/10lr7np/we_all_know_of_flags_that_contain_other_flags_but/?rdt=47864" target="_blank">Cawren's definition of recursive</a> wasn't quite what I was looking for; the flags cited are ones where you can zoom in infinitely, keeping the same aspect ratio and the flag will stay the same, i.e. a very boring fractal, as illustrated below.</span></span></span></p><p><span class="flex gap-xs items-center pr-xs"><span class="flex-none neutral-content font-normal text-12"><span> </span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCLD00J4to0TSbrqaldjV8DC1TrgTxrKPFIUQRRZBjGjUn_VjOivjT5imM-y3t2A-OyJyC4OLDOn2g8CGEnWlEg_wF6ALLr-cuJpiaK5k8nAg_50I5DsQ7vS9L-6XRIe6GjOVi9c01O5qoYGNT7K4aNJoVmhAosMl7nfRCw_gXxiRF4tU337_HvKEepkQ/s2400/recursive%20flags.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCLD00J4to0TSbrqaldjV8DC1TrgTxrKPFIUQRRZBjGjUn_VjOivjT5imM-y3t2A-OyJyC4OLDOn2g8CGEnWlEg_wF6ALLr-cuJpiaK5k8nAg_50I5DsQ7vS9L-6XRIe6GjOVi9c01O5qoYGNT7K4aNJoVmhAosMl7nfRCw_gXxiRF4tU337_HvKEepkQ/s320/recursive%20flags.png" width="213" /></a></div><br /><div><div class="user-hover-card max-w-[352px] min-w-[272px]">
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But it's flags which literally contain pictures of themselves that I'd like to see and some time when I have more time and energy I'll devote more than a couple of minutes to looking for more examples. Or maybe I won't. Who knows?<br /></div><div class="flex items-center text-neutral-content-weak"> </div><div class="flex items-center text-neutral-content-weak">Watch this space. Or don't.</div><div class="flex items-center text-neutral-content-weak"> </div><div class="flex items-center text-neutral-content-weak">Anyhow for no other reason than it seems appropriate, here's my favourite remix of that 1997 banger Ecuador, originally a hit for<span class="js-about-item-abstr"> the DJ and record production team</span> Sash!* (it got to <span class="js-about-item-abstr">number one in Flanders, Romania and Scotland). </span></div><div class="flex items-center text-neutral-content-weak"><span class="js-about-item-abstr"> </span></div><div class="flex items-center text-neutral-content-weak"><span class="js-about-item-abstr">Enjoy.</span></div><div class="flex items-center text-neutral-content-weak"><span class="js-about-item-abstr"><br /></span></div><div class="flex items-center text-neutral-content-weak">.<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cNfwUnOIihA" title="YouTube video player" width="420"></iframe></div><div class="flex items-center text-neutral-content-weak"><br /></div><div class="flex items-center text-neutral-content-weak">*I should point out, for those too young or old to be aware, that the exclamation mark is part of Sash!'s name, like Westward Ho! But the asterisk isn't. Obviously.<br /></div><div class="flex items-center text-neutral-content-weak"><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div><span class="flex gap-xs items-center pr-xs"><span class="flex-none neutral-content font-normal text-12"><span><div class="flex flex-row justify-items-start"><div class="flex flex-col max-w-[calc(100%-60px)] mr-[-4px]"><div class="flex items-center text-neutral-content-weak"><time datetime="2022-07-18T00:00:00.000Z" title="Monday, July 18, 2022 at 1:00:00 AM GMT+1"></time>
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</span></span><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-69597087539797298592023-04-15T16:42:00.005+01:002023-04-15T16:43:48.395+01:00Secrets and spies<p>So the Pentagon leaker, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/13/what-we-know-about-jack-teixeira-alleged-pentagon-leaker" target="_blank">turns out to have been (apparently) an immature nerd trying just to impress a bunch of teenage boys with his edgelord antics</a>,* rather than a guy who sold secrets for money, or a Philby/Maclean-style sleeper agent recruited by ideological fellow travellers from abroad.<br /></p><p>The aspect I find more interesting than the confused motivations of a messed-up 21 year old was raised in <a href="https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/the-biggest-surprise-in-the-us-intelligence" target="_blank">this piece by Daniel Drezner</a>. Drezner lists the material that we know has been leaked and concludes that it seems pretty "meh":</p><p></p><blockquote>You know what? I’m not seeing much in these reports that I find particularly surprising or shocking. All of these assessments mirror the takes one would get on each of these questions from analysts with zero access to classified intelligence.</blockquote>In other words, the Kremlin could have deduced most of what Teixeira leaked from open source intelligence (OSINT), so having a mole in the other side's camp doesn't necessarily give an opponent that big an edge.<br /><p></p><p>Coincidentally, John Quiggin has reacted to the leaks by <a href="https://johnquiggin.com/2023/04/14/gentlemen-dont-read-other-gentlemens-mail-yet-again/" target="_blank">reposting a piece he wrote in 2003</a>, in which argues that the effectiveness of spies and spying in general is very much over-rated.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0qHl-2zyBo-p1DZvD3dAAL-VyrgkyYv0DLE1lFaP1xJphrivoD6wBxD_ygUaekB9sCJV1Ue4RhKeh9nhuawXNxxFsRJsKk6ZibXSDTzaaGAyHp1lHWwuvEwTjcUb9rN08bWHavTa-A9Z0EZpeeyb7LsGhdnjvf0xbwhjuGNMEqbQB1V_4dOME5jsH/s364/Carry_On_Spying.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="273" data-original-width="364" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0qHl-2zyBo-p1DZvD3dAAL-VyrgkyYv0DLE1lFaP1xJphrivoD6wBxD_ygUaekB9sCJV1Ue4RhKeh9nhuawXNxxFsRJsKk6ZibXSDTzaaGAyHp1lHWwuvEwTjcUb9rN08bWHavTa-A9Z0EZpeeyb7LsGhdnjvf0xbwhjuGNMEqbQB1V_4dOME5jsH/s320/Carry_On_Spying.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p></p><blockquote>The basic lesson of game theory for a game of bluff like that of espionage is that, as long as it is possible for counterspies to generate misleading information most of the time, spies are useless even when their information happens to be correct. If the defence plays optimally, the spymaster can never have any reason to believe one piece of information produced by spies and disbelieve another.</blockquote><p></p><p>The biggest problem isn't, though, that spying is mostly ineffective, but that it provides the justification for having an intrusive intelligence apparatus which ends up being deployed against the state's own citizens rather than against hostile foreign powers:<br /></p><p></p><blockquote>The spy myth clearly served the interests of intelligence agencies, which prospered during the 20th century more than any set of spies before them. The real beneficiaries, however, were the counterintelligence agencies or, to dispense with euphemisms, the secret police, of both Western and Communist countries. The powers granted to them for their struggle against armies of spies were used primarily against domestic dissidents.</blockquote><p></p><p>Quiggin's critique of intelligence services over reach seems as relevant to me now as it was when he wrote it in 2003, in the wake of 9/11. Perhaps it's even more relevant now when the organs of the state are partnering up with hugely well-resourced <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/10/how-tech-is-transforming-the-intelligence-industry/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGkU0vSbJbqLJbjYc4r88fcnut-JxK4tVaQorXsqI_KKANk1dLXCIiWKEk2HAYvs-a2KqR0mqqmUkBpqAHFTghrztqUYmOMXazp_7Hg1qy7rPRyJ95OUp-IfVp7P6I11uXZCJnZiEqhX--ATlcD8Kzx7VGnPSal9Pjp_opJLP1pl" target="_blank">surveillance capitalists</a> to keep <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/31/22258856/amazon-ring-partners-police-fire-security-privacy-cameras" target="_blank">an ever closer watch</a> on their own citizens.</p><p><br /></p><p>*If Teixeira had been a 51 year old billionaire, rather than a 21 year old national guard, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-isnt-funny-bad-jokes-twitter-1234712950/" target="_blank">he could have just bought Twitter to impress his teenage fanboys</a>.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p> </p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-91811145511987298752022-10-30T17:38:00.000+00:002022-10-30T17:38:08.035+00:00Halloween photoblogging: post-apocalyptic holiday resort<p>Here's some spooky photoblogging just in time for Halloween. I'm just back from a week's break in Croatia, at a small resort near Dubrovnik. One bay up from where we were staying was another bay with a wide curve of beach and a massive hotel complex ... all of it abandoned and crumbling, with some of the facades pockmarked by gunfire. It was properly creepy after the zombie apocalypse stuff.</p><p>If this has been the in the UK the whole site would have been closed off with stern warning signs, fencing and barriers to keep the curious out, but this lot was just left open for the curious to wander round and explore. I figured it was atmospheric enough to be worth a few photographs, so here they are. On first visit I had no idea what had gone on here, or why the whole complex had been abandoned. A quick internet search uncovered the back story, as told by the good folk at <i>Atlas Obscura</i> - click the link <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-abandoned-hotels-of-kupari-kupari-croatia" target="_blank">here</a> for details of the abandoned hotels of <span>Kupari and how they came to be abandoned.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikcTE4L4bi00ZRFyeVdfWTowVluvQ_TFGms2yqtfI2wDQmUlb3G0AE8Fz_YsDJdArZ9eczH4QeeoD6FBPqnodwCjdGMRD3lOkaksFUdYW-mx8eIGp4sJg802EEhNFVpIua4U-sBSgnFcwJcKJlsPxe4vdFfuVYoM3p6jUEsUq7ShLhFfTTvGnbm5w5/s4032/CB72A924-43FC-4BFE-BC7B-7BADB0D0F8B6.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikcTE4L4bi00ZRFyeVdfWTowVluvQ_TFGms2yqtfI2wDQmUlb3G0AE8Fz_YsDJdArZ9eczH4QeeoD6FBPqnodwCjdGMRD3lOkaksFUdYW-mx8eIGp4sJg802EEhNFVpIua4U-sBSgnFcwJcKJlsPxe4vdFfuVYoM3p6jUEsUq7ShLhFfTTvGnbm5w5/s320/CB72A924-43FC-4BFE-BC7B-7BADB0D0F8B6.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB4F5lekyCbZsb7LvEFB_H57RFuAvaqilzJWTek2jq08BGZgC6aTH3FHZR3TJyFXTIPYMWbkfCAjaiwbmTdgk5iqT_eoaFzGxsF-z-bTLe4nfDmNcMG7AvI0zCCGrI_W8q2_pGqMdjtG4T0pAW24ixH59ujIz6PfYji7i0CbejfUUd3zYjl-8FExoq/s320/2A9036AE-4F69-498D-A63E-ECF111FD8418.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-DbDh7ewq2SYQoGkTK4K9MoCSF36pmo2xlm6T2ICI9fOji_Cxj_ZV8VndFY1xX2btMITlw1BAvAI7gZ-2xql4fMNYXvana8c6keGx8cgGAtL4cnsPUV8jopnNxXE-xBsw6Sh4UBB0EaEwsAAhh1cA6MwGGDSivIUgurEYlvqdI9UPK9Mc5VRbDqjM/s4032/0DAD22A8-18AF-49FC-829A-8C974E6071E5.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-DbDh7ewq2SYQoGkTK4K9MoCSF36pmo2xlm6T2ICI9fOji_Cxj_ZV8VndFY1xX2btMITlw1BAvAI7gZ-2xql4fMNYXvana8c6keGx8cgGAtL4cnsPUV8jopnNxXE-xBsw6Sh4UBB0EaEwsAAhh1cA6MwGGDSivIUgurEYlvqdI9UPK9Mc5VRbDqjM/s320/0DAD22A8-18AF-49FC-829A-8C974E6071E5.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0Vukovarska 34, 20207, Srebreno, Croatia42.6203016 18.191505342.613985269339096 18.182922231152343 42.6266179306609 18.200088368847656tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-46792438295983410572022-07-30T13:57:00.004+01:002022-07-30T14:19:39.888+01:00Baiting your hook with virtue<p>I've been fascinated, in a slightly horrified way, by how right wing propagandists constantly try to reframe public discourse by the repetition of a small vocabulary of loaded words and phrases. The pejorative use of "<a href="https://downedrobin.blogspot.com/2022/06/anti-wokism-back-to-bad-old-days.html" target="_blank">woke</a>" is seems to be the most common of these linguitic tics right now, but accusing your opponent of "<a href="https://downedrobin.blogspot.com/2017/12/virtue-signalling-seriously.html" target="_blank">virtue signalling</a>" is still widely used as a catch-all way of dismissing an opposing view.</p><p>These sort of prefabricared buzz phrases fit together like Lego blocks, so you don't have to go far on social media before you trip over people complaining angrily about "woke virtue signallers". The point seems to be to keep using the same linguistic cues, over, and over, and over again in that hope that, thanks to <a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/availability-heuristic" target="_blank">availabilty bias</a>, these negative connotations will stick in people's minds like mud.</p><p>The assumptions underlying this sort of language are, of course, highly questionable. What does "woke" really mean, and is it necessarily a bad thing? Are all examples of alleged "virture signalling" really always examples of people insincerely paying lip service to virtuous behaviour merely to look good? These are the things the propagandists using this sort of language doesn't want you to think about.</p><p>None of this stuff is new, but I did come across a new phrase that underlines how incoherent the right's weaponisation of "woke" and "virtue signalling" is. I was listening to a recent episode of Michael Rosen's Word of Mouth* radio programme about language and how we use it. The episode dealt with the language of online dating and introduced me to a new phrase I'd never heard before; "wokefishing".</p><p> Wokefishing is a more specific form of "catfishing", which is deceptively creating a fake online identity to lure somebody into a relationship under flase pretenses. In wokefishing, the romance scammer pretends to subscribe to a set of what people are shorthanding as "woke" beliefs, which could cover things like social justice, women's rights, minority rights, tolerance, green issues and so on, in order to lure somebody into a relationship.</p><p>Putting this new word next to the way the right weaponises "woke" and "social justice" prompts some interesting thoughts:</p><p>Firstly, culture warriors on the right want us to see "woke" as a pejorative term of abuse. If people are pretending to be woke and using woke identities it to make themselves more attractive to potential partners, this suggests that being woke is an attractive trait in a dating profile, a plus, like interesting, good sense of humour, honest, etc. So not only is it unclear how being actively opposed to social justice is a bad thing, as the "anti-woke" brigade claim, but wokeness is also a plus on a more superficial, social capital, level.</p><p>Which brings us, secondly, to the crime of "virtue signalling". In a literal sense, that's what wokefishers are doing; pretending to believe in virtuous things for selfish and cynical ends, while actually not believing in them at all. So who is doing the "virtue signalling" here? By definition, the people who are wokefishing aren't woke. Woke people saying that they subscribe to woke beliefs, or even better, honestly saying that they live by those beliefs and try to advance their principles in the world aren't "virtue signalling", they're just being honest about their core beliefs.</p><p>So we've got that rare beast, a genuine example of virtue signalling in the wild. And the culprits are, by definition, people who aren't woke. </p><p>I would say that this is an example psychological projection from the right's keyboard warriors. It sounds good, but I'd be falling into the same trap as the people who routinely use "virtue signalling" as a taunt; using a superficially sciency, technical-sounding term that's really quite sloppy and imprecise. After all, the term psychological projection comes out of Freudian analysis, a field which doesn't exactly come top of the class when it comes to having a rigorous evidence base. </p><p> Not psychological projection, then. An older name will do. Hypocrisy.</p><p> *Link to the episode on BBC Sounds <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0019jyf" target="_blank">here</a>. Also available on at least one podcast app (I listen to Word of Mouth on <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/" target="_blank">Stitcher</a>) <br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-31375146869363102622022-06-26T08:32:00.002+01:002022-06-26T09:21:41.168+01:00"Anti-wokism" - back to the bad old days<p>According to Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson "wokeism" is a "mind virus". Before stepping down as Conservative party chairman, Oliver "<a href="https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2022/03/22/dowden-speech-privet-hedges-of-freedom/" target="_blank"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">the privet hedges of a free people</span></a>" Dowden dunked on "wokeism" at greater length (but with no greater clarity) <a href="https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/oliver-dowden-makes-bizarre-trumpian-speech-to-controversial-us-think-tank-312091/" target="_blank">in a speech to the hard right US Heritage Foundation</a>:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>“Rogue states are seeking to challenge the international order. And
at the precise point when our resolve ought to be strongest, a
pernicious new ideology is sweeping our societies...</p><p>...It
goes by many names. In Britain, its adherents sometimes describe
themselves as ‘social justice warriors’. They claim to be ‘woke’,
awakened to the so-called truths of our societies. But wherever they are
found, they pursue a common policy inimical to freedom.”</p></blockquote><p></p><p>The use of "woke" as a catch-all <a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Category:Snarl_words" target="_blank">snarl word</a> in the right's culture wars is relatively new. The substance of the fight they're picking isn't. I was reminded of this when I came across an old Daily Express cartoon that <a href="https://twitter.com/evansmithhist/status/1539504876191105024?s=20&t=vs1G-JSIcYIVOzvA260CFA" target="_blank">somebody had posted on Twitter</a>. A picture is worth a thousand words, but I'll repeat <a href="https://twitter.com/2primates/status/1540271407661289473?s=20&t=cQcfDRlYMhxIk_OMJaBnRA" target="_blank">what I tweeted</a> just to hammer home what's wrong with this picture:<span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></p><blockquote><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">The Conservatives picking a fight over Culture War talking points is nothing new. See this Express cartoon from the 80s which did the same thing back when people could openly attack things like anti-racism without even hiding behind the euphemism of being "anti-woke".</span></blockquote><p></p><div class="css-1dbjc4n"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1s2bzr4"><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-37j5jr r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-vrz42v r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__6goa7adf80a" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgChr5xzxodvZRyx19HUZBNZ8MqM7i5HEU6XJ1uj0z2UnKQtEXF9QHIrSX7eVMgGmkWYGoFjoDLpHyVY-fNM9lW5Ue2F2Oaz7Q-oZo3BAf7ywoN7bGUGFPQ0eSf_fNuEbQtPpwDuurG6ynyCWRgh3g99SCl3LYsRWBKg0u6ZN-9QxztGDVxH7gNcFtU/s1012/dogwhistle.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1012" data-original-width="863" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgChr5xzxodvZRyx19HUZBNZ8MqM7i5HEU6XJ1uj0z2UnKQtEXF9QHIrSX7eVMgGmkWYGoFjoDLpHyVY-fNM9lW5Ue2F2Oaz7Q-oZo3BAf7ywoN7bGUGFPQ0eSf_fNuEbQtPpwDuurG6ynyCWRgh3g99SCl3LYsRWBKg0u6ZN-9QxztGDVxH7gNcFtU/s320/dogwhistle.jpg" width="273" /></a></div><br /></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><blockquote>I think a lot about this cartoon. Especially the upside-down figure labelled "council power". What does that even mean? Vampiric local authorities sucking honest Tory ratepayers dry?
And hammers & sickles to label everything they don't like Marxist. Batshit then & now.</blockquote></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-37j5jr r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-vrz42v r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__6goa7adf80a" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKuabSmchtJ4oPuNdFSayfbST0J6LQWDl3qloyAA5GsroGujwMez5eoqQiWSOZ-u3Ih0bfMycoNaJMmqvhkWaCW4FmFsMXZt14eLEaGVDRUa5sNKCkgGmNIPg-4SlLoSXh7eu3sOUbApCNZGBY11ci2IE03RJs-1zBtDdD8Qrr7XtQTbITKQeFXYp5/s763/council%20bat.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="763" data-original-width="661" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKuabSmchtJ4oPuNdFSayfbST0J6LQWDl3qloyAA5GsroGujwMez5eoqQiWSOZ-u3Ih0bfMycoNaJMmqvhkWaCW4FmFsMXZt14eLEaGVDRUa5sNKCkgGmNIPg-4SlLoSXh7eu3sOUbApCNZGBY11ci2IE03RJs-1zBtDdD8Qrr7XtQTbITKQeFXYp5/s320/council%20bat.jpg" width="277" /></a></div>There's not much to add to this - the war against "wokeism" is a war against social justice, solidarity, equality and inclusiveness. It's a war fought for the attitudes encapsulated in this cartoon, a war for division, for othering, for punching down and keeping the designated outgroups firmly in their place. </span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-37j5jr r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-vrz42v r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__6goa7adf80a" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><br /></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-37j5jr r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-vrz42v r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__6goa7adf80a" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">The war starts with words and memes, with mockery and humiliation. The end point is action. And, if you still haven't joined the dots between images, words and action, remember the Heritage Foundation, the "think tank" (lobby group) that Oliver Dowden crafted his "anti-woke" talking points for? </span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-37j5jr r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-vrz42v r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__6goa7adf80a" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-37j5jr r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-vrz42v r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__6goa7adf80a" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></div><blockquote><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-37j5jr r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-vrz42v r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__6goa7adf80a" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Since its founding, the Heritage Foundation has become “inextricably intertwined” with Republican administrations and lawmakers in Washington. Heritage brands itself as a beacon of the intellectual conservative establishment; in reality, it is an organization that regularly spouts hateful ideas on par with organizations like the Family Research Council (FRC), which has earned designation from the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. Much like its peer groups, Heritage dedicates significant energy to extremist policy recommendations that hinder access to abortion and birth control and promote discrimination against LGBTQ individuals...</span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-37j5jr r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-vrz42v r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__6goa7adf80a" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><br /></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-37j5jr r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-vrz42v r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__6goa7adf80a" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">...Kay Coles James became president of The Heritage Foundation in the beginning of 2018; she had served as a Heritage board member for over a decade. James previously worked in the George W. Bush administration and as Virginia’s secretary of health and human services. James has compared LGBTQ people to “drug addicts, alcoholics, adulterers, or ‘anything else sinful,’” and has also tweeted that “abortion is a form of discrimination,” attempting to paint her anti-abortion work in the same vein as fighting racism.</span></div></blockquote><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-37j5jr r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-vrz42v r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__6goa7adf80a" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-37j5jr r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-vrz42v r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__6goa7adf80a" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><br /></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-37j5jr r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-vrz42v r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__6goa7adf80a" lang="en"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicEqKclXvJTG0oofBlo15OXrpDyNxYQI6lCWyA71tDNkd0dvPF74s2D5UDYt1TMCRL8f7N-TKlss6DK24OiwTB4GtB5kojS80jg6MVeot1_BdTT1I9jfmmut0zJXZnVrHfW30mhKvw_fS8llb8ZuWJnWBYWNn48anplyb7By9w53XoL8S10rHMfKYS/s846/Heritage.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="846" data-original-width="778" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicEqKclXvJTG0oofBlo15OXrpDyNxYQI6lCWyA71tDNkd0dvPF74s2D5UDYt1TMCRL8f7N-TKlss6DK24OiwTB4GtB5kojS80jg6MVeot1_BdTT1I9jfmmut0zJXZnVrHfW30mhKvw_fS8llb8ZuWJnWBYWNn48anplyb7By9w53XoL8S10rHMfKYS/s320/Heritage.jpg" width="294" /></a></div><a href="http://Pro-Lies.org" target="_blank">Pro-Lies.org</a><br /><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-37j5jr r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-vrz42v r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" data-testid="tweetText" dir="auto" id="id__6goa7adf80a" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">It starts with words. It ends with action. It ends with reversing decades of hard-won progress overnight. Goodbye <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/uk-anti-abortion-christian-right-roe-v-wade/" target="_blank">Roe vs Wade</a>, it was nice knowing you...<br /></span></div></div></div><p></p><p><br /></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-12175128707366280172022-05-19T11:50:00.005+01:002022-05-19T11:57:42.631+01:00Cartoon apes want to be free.<p></p><blockquote><p>Bitcoin, ethereum and other major cryptocurrencies have been hit by a huge crash over the last week, partly triggered by the shock collapse of a major coin.</p><p>The bitcoin price has lost 25% over the last month with its biggest rival ethereum down over 30%.</p><p>Other smaller cryptocurrencies have been even harder hit—sparking fears others could collapse entirely.
<br /> </p><p>Now, as serious economic "shock therapy" warning signs flash, analysts at Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley have predicted prices of digital collectible non-fungible tokens (NFTs) could come under pressure. (<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2022/05/17/stark-nft-prediction-issued-after-huge-1-trillion-bitcoin-ethereum-and-crypto-price-crash/?sh=7e482d04440c" target="_blank">Forbes</a>)</p></blockquote><p></p><p>As a complete outsider, one thing occurred to me, once I'd picked myself off the floor from laughing myself stupid at the plight of people whose idea of fun was tweeting "Have fun staying poor" at people who didn't fall for the latest iteration of the old get-rich-quick scam. That was how the whole idea of NFTs seems to be a great example of how clever people (or at least ones with specific smarts in areas like IT & cryptography) can also be really dumb. I'm reminded of <a href="http://2ndfirstlook.com/2012/09/gary-larson.html" target="_blank">the classic Larson cartoon of a geeky kid outside the Midvale School for the Gifted, stubbornly pushing at a door marked "pull"</a>.</p><p data-pm-slice="1 1 []">My first thought about attempts to monetise a digital artworks by chaining it to a token of authenticity was how counter it runs to the principle that information wants to be free.* The legacy of some very smart digital pioneers is that reproducing digital information is trivially easy and almost costless. Attempting to make this process hard again is a difficult task which the smart people behind NFTs set themselves - and failed to achieve, as owning an NFT is not the same thing as owning the artwork or image, or text message, or tweet, or whatever else you decide to associated with it:</p><p data-pm-slice="1 1 []"></p><blockquote><a href="https://hackernoon.com/nft-the-treachery-of-digital-images" target="_blank">There is no possible way to see an NFT with your naked eyes. They are immaterial goods that you cannot see but own. NFTs are inherently treacherous and right-clickers, collectors, and artists worldwide are falling for their deception.</a></blockquote><p></p><p data-pm-slice="1 1 []">My second thought is how obviously mostly socially useless and scammy the NFT pioneers' project is. I say "mostly" because the quote above hints at how you could justify an attempt to make digital art, or any other digital creation, non-fungible. If you're an artist, or the creator of anything in the digital space, it would be easier to profit from your own hard work and talent if it wasn't possible for every rando on the internet to swipe your creation with a right click. If this was just a tool for creators to protect their creations from theft, I'd understand.</p><p data-pm-slice="1 1 []">But it's not that. This is mostly middle men, trying to turn either someone else's work or some, usually ugly, mediocre, low-effort image they've created themselves into a something with the attributes of a gambling chip crossed with a share in a pyramid scheme which has value only if you can pursuade a horde of greedy and credulous people that it has value.<br /></p><p>Other than that, I'll leave the commentary on this story to people who actually have a proper knowledge of IT, cryptography and finance, which I don't. But I think it's still legitimate even for me, as layperson, to take a firm view on this, based on the fact that there are plenty of explanations out there from crypto evangelists and from crypto sceptics who do have some background in this stuff. And I've found the arguments of the sceptics to be lucid where the evangelists are obscure, explanatory where the evangelists are defensive and disinterested, where the evangelists would have an obvious interest in pushing this stuff.</p><p>For an actually informed tear-down of NFT/crypto hype, explaining why this stuff mostly doesn't work as advertised (and would be a dystopian nightmare if implemented, even if it did work as advertised), see video below: <br /></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YQ_xWvX1n9g" title="YouTube video player" width="420"></iframe>
<p><br /></p><p>*Here's the full orignal quote from Stewart Brand "On the one hand you have — the point you’re making Woz [Steve Wozniak] — is that
information sort of wants to be expensive because it is so valuable —
the right information in the right place just changes your life. On the
other hand, <b><i>information almost wants to be free because the costs of
getting it out is getting lower and lower all of the time</i></b>. So you have
these two things fighting against each other." </p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-90823200204715153962021-11-25T11:27:00.003+00:002021-11-28T11:59:39.944+00:00Anti-vaxxers and yellow stars - a deliberate provocation?<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE__h4MU_yPB6yJuoZOQCUO0cnjFKawWqC6P0K8utMQTX45Da3Ds5tRWdFjEGWw1TdkpMPVLeQ76vEE9BLDfwBEy7UV3W4AHGlDSevpNacoNJMTqGCfp6QWREn1JadyXOyk6c2QP4vodI/s1200/yellow-stars-protests.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE__h4MU_yPB6yJuoZOQCUO0cnjFKawWqC6P0K8utMQTX45Da3Ds5tRWdFjEGWw1TdkpMPVLeQ76vEE9BLDfwBEy7UV3W4AHGlDSevpNacoNJMTqGCfp6QWREn1JadyXOyk6c2QP4vodI/w200-h133/yellow-stars-protests.jpg" width="200"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.heyalma.com/why-are-people-in-the-u-k-wearing-yellow-jewish-stars-to-protest-covid-restrictions/" target="_blank">This nonsense</a> is not OK on any level.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>NurPhoto/Getty Images</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br><p></p><p>In any hierarchy of crassly offensive gestures, anti-vaxxers appropriating the yellow star badge used by the Nazis to mark out millions of Jews for abuse and, ultimately, murder comes pretty close to the top. But what is there to say about this, other than the obvious point that it's a self-evidently terrible, insulting, ignorant comparison?</p><p>Talia Bracha Lavin uses this wholly imagined conflation of the control of a pandemic disease and genocide as a teachable moment, in a Substack essay on the real connection between the Holocaust, disease and vaccination. In this case the disease was typhus, which tore through the crowded ghettoes and camps of occupied Europe and the Reich. </p><p>The connection with vaccination was the heroic and clandestine work of people like Rudolf Weigl, who created a typhus vaccine in the 1930s. When the Nazis seized Poland, he was ordered to produce the vaccine for the use of the occupiers but, at great personal risk, smuggled tens of thousands of vaccine doses into the Warsaw Ghetto. Or Buchenwald inmate Ludwik Fleck, a Jewish biologist who the Nazis used to develop another typhus vaccine in a camp laboratory. Fleck, again at appalling personal risk, managed to deny effective batches of vaccine to his captors, while creating doses real vaccine which he reserved to inoculate his fellow prisoners.</p><p>It's a fascinating piece of history which I wasn't previously aware of, and you can read the whole thing <a href="https://theswordandthesandwich.substack.com/p/antivaxx-holocaust" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p>The subset of anti-vaxxers appropriating the yellow star is, from the
viewpoint of anybody with any sense of proportion or historical
perspective, being needlessly, horrendously offensive. But <i>why</i> would
anyone do this? Mere ignorance might seem to be the reason, but many of
these anti-vaxx groups seem to have well-funded backers (<a href="https://downedrobin.blogspot.com/search?q=HART" target="_blank">AstroTurf organisations like HART and Us For Them</a>) and sophisticated media
strategies, so my guess is that the generation of outrage is quite
deliberate and calculated in this case.</p><p>It also fits in with strategies which contrarian reactionaries have already successfully used to gain attention, trip up their opponents and claim unearned victim status. There could be several ways in which such provocateurs/trolls benefit by weaponising offence. </p><p>1. Provoke, then double down. If your aim isn't to engage in good faith argument, but to dismay and wrongfoot opponents, do or say something obnoxious. When angry people push back, don't even try to defend what you said or did. Instead, throw their reaction back in their faces and accuse them of over-sensistivity, of being "triggered." "Facts" you can say "don't care about your feelings." Claim a performative "win" because you kept your cool and made them "emotional" and "irrational":<br></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWrimSxACM-M1XLU2HyQVJkCwDGRyeeh6cOAjyEPbT4ydJgm03v7hE8fMNJw82wQyT7NQNsrB7UxxPceOdMD7UlHPuHvt7XCDrF37vuiMRUrFY-deOhK3f1NtAzYa041hPUa_Cb-_EEpE/s250/trig.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="218" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWrimSxACM-M1XLU2HyQVJkCwDGRyeeh6cOAjyEPbT4ydJgm03v7hE8fMNJw82wQyT7NQNsrB7UxxPceOdMD7UlHPuHvt7XCDrF37vuiMRUrFY-deOhK3f1NtAzYa041hPUa_Cb-_EEpE/w174-h200/trig.jpg" width="174"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"I triggered you, you snowflake. That means I win."<br></td></tr></tbody></table><br><p></p><p>2. Use provocation to game social media algorithms and the attention economy:</p><p></p><blockquote><a href="https://www.newsclick.in/how-facebook-algorithms-promote-hate-and-toxic-content" target="_blank">By privileging posts that promote “engagement”—meaning people reading, liking or replying to posts on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram—Facebook ensured that people stayed on its platform for much longer. </a></blockquote>What's engaging? Among other things, content that makes people angry enough to respond and get into arguments. If you can be obnoxious enough to instigate fights on social media, but not quite obnoxious enough to get yourself kicked off whatever platform you're on, you and your social media platform can enjoy a toxic, symbiotic relationship. Posting a selfie of you and your anti-vaxx buddies doing Holocaust cosplay carries a low risk of getting you kicked off a platform like Twitter, but a high probablity of attracting hostile engagement from normies who find your gesture sickening. This form of engagement mirrors the cynical old hacks' slogan about how the sensational and shocking sells newspapers or TV airtime: <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IfItBleedsItLeads" target="_blank">"If it bleeds, it leads."</a><br><p></p><p>3. Flip the script, play the victim. On one level, the people appropriating the yellow stars are already, playing at being victims, putting on the literal fancy dress of opression without actually being oppressed in any meaningful way. But they can also rhetorically claim victim status. The title of a book by professional contrarian <a href="https://beastrabban.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/private-eye-on-brexit-partys-claire-foxs-support-for-murderous-fascists/" target="_blank">Claire Fox</a> shows how it's done. It's called <i>I Find That Offensive</i>:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq8XH8XuwAAqdiLC4Atj46TN3yeefFkoHE19xu6KZap0iFPVOMVsP7YYUuYmpFDQyTw95GsMkG1n33BqJH6RvhX-lfCKEi5CESMbiwl7_zxD10p6FYvuFIIaOp9Gs57YPCUTQpoY3gth0/s400/Contrarian.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="250" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq8XH8XuwAAqdiLC4Atj46TN3yeefFkoHE19xu6KZap0iFPVOMVsP7YYUuYmpFDQyTw95GsMkG1n33BqJH6RvhX-lfCKEi5CESMbiwl7_zxD10p6FYvuFIIaOp9Gs57YPCUTQpoY3gth0/w125-h200/Contrarian.jpg" width="125"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"When I say whatever I like, that's my free speech. If you dare to push back, that's your cancel culture."<br></td></tr></tbody></table><p>This is the "triggered" meme with a twist. Instead of merely arguing that push back against a provocateur being obnoxious is proof that the troll's opponents are weak and emotional, Fox and her fellow bad faith actors argue that, if you push back against abuse or punching down <i>you</i> are the oppressor, an enemy of "free speech." Obviously there's a contradiction between 1. ("You're a weak, emotional soyboy cuck") and 3. ("You're oppressing me with your cancel culture, you bully"), but bad faith actors will just ignore the contradictions in their own positions and bluster on regardless: </p><p></p><blockquote><a href="https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html" target="_blank">"<b>The enemy is both strong and weak</b>.</a> </blockquote><blockquote><a href="https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html" target="_blank">By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak." (from Umberto Eco's essay, <i>Eternal Fascism</i>)</a></blockquote><p></p><p>As far as I'm aware, Claire Fox herself hasn't actively supported the yellow star-sporting anti-vaxxers. She's a mainstream media personality, a former Radio 4 regular and (God help us), a member of the House of Lords and has a reputation (albeit unearned) to preserve. But she and her fellow enablers demonstrate how defending the indefensible in the name of free speech is typically done. </p><p>A bad faith actor in her position isn't there to directly voice the worst, most divisive and abusive messages. Her role is to provide an intellectual fig-leaf for her side in the culture wars, to dog-whistle support for being able to punch down, to be abusive towards minorities, to be grossly offensive in the name of "free speech." </p><p>She doesn't personally sit on the football terraces booing a racially diverse team of England footballers when they take the knee. Her role is to give the people who do a veneer of respectability - they're not intolerant bullies punching down at minorities and the people who dare to show solidarity with them, she insinuates, but free speech warriors who are themselves being oppressed by "cancel culture." </p><p>From a position of apprent respectability as a public "intellectual", people like Fox actively and cynically embolden the worst among us to equate free speech with their inalienable right to say anything, no matter how hateful, divisive and, yes, offensive while dismissing any counter-argument as Orwellian "cancel culture." </p><p>Yes, Claire I do find *that* (your unqualified support for punching down and the presumed absolute right to cause offence without consequences) offensive. </p><p>If I was a wedding guest and started insulting and abusing the bride and groom for no other reason than me deciding that I have absolute free speech, that I'm damn well entitled to say what I like and if you don't like it, tough, facts don't care about your feelings, you'd rightly call me a jerk.</p><p>Insult the memories of six million murdered and countless more bereaved, abused and traumatised for no other reason than being themselves and you're a jerk times several million.</p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></p><blockquote><a href="https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1373382997819416581?s=20" target="_blank">"Instrumentalization of the tragedy of Jews who suffered, were humiliated, marked with a yellow star, and finally isolated in ghettos and murdered during the Holocaust, in order to argue against vaccination that save human lives is a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline." (From the Auschwitz Memorial's Twitter feed).</a></blockquote><br><p></p><p><i> <br></i></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-84909794196026057092021-11-23T05:24:00.001+00:002021-11-23T05:25:01.279+00:00Our woman on Havana<p>Havana Syndorome has been <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/11/15/havana-syndrome-an-act-of-war-or-just-an-act" target="_blank">back in the news</a> recently.<br /></p><p>When this story of mysterious symptoms afflicting US Embassy staff in Havana first emerged, <a href="https://downedrobin.blogspot.com/2017/10/acoustic-device-rumours-turned-up-to-11.html" target="_blank">I was sceptical</a> of the various theories attributing the outbreak to things like microwaves or sonic pulses. So it was interesting to hear what one of my favourite science communicators, the physicst Sabine Hossenfelder, had to say on the subject.</p><p>One of the things I like about Sabine is that she's got a dryly sceptical take on things, and she's pretty good at cutting throught the hype surrounding various science-related topics, from the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY" target="_blank">overblown claims being made about progress towards nuclear fusion power</a> to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb0UnogKQeo" target="_blank">terraforming Mars</a>. So it was interesting to see that from three alternative explanations, (mass hysteria, microwave pulses and ultrasound), she sets out the reasons why she thinks mass hysteria is the <i>least</i> likely explanation:<br /></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/g9C3ZKWLZG4" title="YouTube video player" width="420"></iframe>
<p>It's not a slam dunk, but it's made me question whether my initial reaction - that this is clearly and obviously made up - was right. A timely reminder that sometimes we need to be sceptical even about our own scepticism.<br /></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-8980163396205698312021-10-24T15:28:00.007+01:002021-12-02T21:48:54.083+00:00Botany corner<p>I've just been having an idle flick through a copy of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3368729-collins-complete-guide-to-british-wild-flowers" target="_blank"><i>Complete Guide to British Wild Flowers</i></a> by Paul Sterry and I'm here to remind you that common plant names are wild. You probably know that already (Love Lies Bleeding, Fat Hen, Deadly Nightshade, etc), but there are so many more:<br /></p><p><a href="https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discover-wild-plants-nature/plant-fungi-species/weasels-snout" target="_blank">Weasel's Snout</a></p><p><a href="https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/wildflowers/yellow-archangel" target="_blank">Yellow Archangel</a></p><p><a href="https://plantlife.love-wildflowers.org.uk/wildflower_garden/grow_in_the_garden/bastard_balm" target="_blank">Bastard Balm</a></p><p><a href="https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=781" target="_blank">Enchanter's Nightshade</a></p><p><a href="https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/wildflowers/frogbit" target="_blank">Frogbit</a></p><p><a href="https://www.naturespot.org.uk/species/wayfaring-tree" target="_blank">Wayfaring-tree</a></p><p><a href="https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discover-wild-plants-nature/plant-fungi-species/Devils-bit-scabious" target="_blank">Devil's Bit Scabious</a></p><p><a href="https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=348" target="_blank">Mind-your-own-business</a> </p><p>There's a lovely folklore/fantasy vibe going on here and none of these names would be out of place in a Tolkien/Prachett-style fantasy world. I particuarly like <a href="https://grassandflower.co.uk/phoenix-amenity-supplies/phoenix-amenity/faq-page/melancholy-thistle-cirsium-heterophyllum/" target="_blank">Melancholy Thistle</a> (Eeyore's thistle of choice), <a href="http://www.wildflowerweb.co.uk/plant/1612/sticky-mouse-ear" target="_blank">Sticky Mouse-ear</a> (another job for Supervet) <a href="https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/wildflowers/petty-spurge" target="_blank">Petty Spurge</a> (really needs to get a sense of proprtion) and <a href="https://peterorchard.me.uk/species-toad-rush" target="_blank">Toad Rush</a> (OK, obviously a reed, but also probably a classic Sega video game).</p><p>Sterry's book is about flowers, not fungi, but don't even get me started on popular fungus names - the <a href="https://www.mushroomknowhow.com/destroying-angel-mushrooms/">Destroying Angel</a> alone is metal enough to tell you that there are some fungi you really, really don't want to mess with.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-36165150217816268882021-08-13T09:53:00.004+01:002021-08-13T09:55:58.234+01:00Raptured into the VIP lane<div>Remember <a href="https://downedrobin.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-rapture-of-elites.html" target="_blank">John Nelson Darby</a>, that very well-connected chap who came up with the idea of the godly being physically taken up into heaven in the Rapture when the End Times kick off? The Exclusive Brethren guy? Turns out the Exclusive Brethren are still a thing. And they're still <i>extremely</i> well-connected:</div><div><p class="has-drop-cap is-style-default"></p><blockquote><p class="has-drop-cap is-style-default">At least £180 million – and up to £300 million – in ventilator and PPE contracts appear to have been awarded to companies linked to an evangelical movement described as a “cult” by former members which has multiple ties to the Conservative Party, <i>Byline Times </i>can reveal.</p><p class="is-style-default">The Exclusive Brethren is a subset of a Christian group, often described as Plymouth Brethren in the UK. It came to prominence after being investigated by the Charity Commission over whether it was delivering enough “public good” to maintain its charitable status.</p><p class="is-style-default">The sect, whose members are subject to strict disciplinary practices, enjoys tax reliefs and rebates reportedly worth as much as £11 million a year.</p></blockquote><p class="is-style-default"></p><p class="is-style-default"> <a href="https://bylinetimes.com/2020/08/10/companies-linked-to-exclusive-brethren-evangelical-sect-awarded-hundreds-of-millions-of-ppe-government-contracts/" target="_blank"><i>Byline Times</i></a><br /></p><p class="is-style-default">Apparently the movement has stayed true to its establishment roots and, ironically, these committed evangelical Christians are still doing their bit to ensure that the meek are as far from inheriting the earth as they ever were. It's also still a bit <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-shropshire-12182333" target="_blank">cultish</a>, apparently. <br /></p></div>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-82559426503425935702021-08-11T21:09:00.018+01:002021-11-23T16:33:37.661+00:00The rapture of the elites<div></div><blockquote><div>Verily I say unto you, <i>There be some standing here</i>,* which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.</div>Matthew 16:28</blockquote><div>In its original form, Christianity looks like a doomsday sect, rejecting the transient things of this world and scorning worldly power and riches, based on an explicit belief and expectation that the end of days, when the established order would be torn down and remade, was at hand. So don't accumulate wealth, don't even think about how you'll support yourself. God will provide. Consider the lilies. Sell all your stuff, give to the poor and come and follow me. The big guy upstairs gonna sock it to the Man and all you meek shall inherit the earth. </div><div><br /></div><div>Which sounds to me very much like the voices of alienated people keenly anticipating the destruction of an existing order that isn't doing it for them and which they're not invested in. <br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho5uUTYr-lfIdepw_X35zC6442aDIw2CYAK6Z4gL8naGwczllq9m1T4rCGDrPFT7-1H7AepSx-n0N0kHkC8M-cYeT9llMFpB2rLS_7NzVDGvbfU5V7pcXrb_5n7OYEvu8S0v-DM002jcE/s176/chairmanreg.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="132" data-original-width="176" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho5uUTYr-lfIdepw_X35zC6442aDIw2CYAK6Z4gL8naGwczllq9m1T4rCGDrPFT7-1H7AepSx-n0N0kHkC8M-cYeT9llMFpB2rLS_7NzVDGvbfU5V7pcXrb_5n7OYEvu8S0v-DM002jcE/s0/chairmanreg.gif" width="176" /></a></div><div>When The End Times self-evidently hadn't rolled around before all of those standing there had tasted of death, the belief system adapted itself, the millenarian elements retreating further into a more or less vaguely specified future. By the time Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman Empire, the contempt for worldly splendour had been dialed down a lot and the faith had developed into a religion more palatable to those with various degrees of worldly wealth and power, not the exclusive preserve of aescetics who wanted to give it all away, embrace poverty and let the Lord provide until his imminent return.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>None of this is <span class="osc_tag_system osc_error_green" id="osc_tag_system_12">particularly</span> original, but it does point to an expected pattern - in general, you'd think millenarian religion and apocalyptic belief systems would appeal to the less powerful, to those with the least to lose, while more established religions and philosophies which have come to an accomodation with secular power would be more appealing to people who are more or less comforable and happy with their status and place in the existing hierarchy. </div><div> </div><div>In secular terms, you could almost see the proto-Christians as <span class="osc_tag_system osc_error_green" id="osc_tag_system_19">revolutionaries</span> and the conventionally pious majority in the Christian Roman Empire and subsequent Christendom as conformists. I say almost, because the early Christians, unlike secular <span class="osc_tag_system osc_error_green" id="osc_tag_system_19">revolutionaries</span> (and some other religious groups) weren't actively trying to engineer the downfall of the existing order. Not for them the credo of Auden's radicals:</div><div></div><blockquote><div>The <span class="osc_tag_system osc_error_green" id="osc_tag_system_21">conscious</span> acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder; </div><div>To-day the expending of powers </div><div>On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.</div></blockquote><div></div><div>The overthrow of the established order was to be accomplished by God, not by Party cadres mobilising the masses. <br /></div><div> </div><div>We still have people with a millenarian mindset, notably believers in The Rapture, who think that the End Times may be close at hand. In their belief system, true believers will be bodily teleported to heaven immediately before a seven-year period of strife and suffering called The Tribulation afflicts the sinful remainder of humanity. This time of troubles will end when Christ returns and establishes a thousand-year godly kingdom.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxVtgBUyGv8GVz89-BWLFzn3vjRFINA7OaMbk_FVtczQOnDOaFrJZRu-5unmBXydXBpS5zNhKq5bMf5FHlZgRQEviUkNGqkasncehF_17KWw7eWwO8q_ESlvYUhoAIsTP82EE4OyCsvQ0/s487/rapture.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="487" data-original-width="296" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxVtgBUyGv8GVz89-BWLFzn3vjRFINA7OaMbk_FVtczQOnDOaFrJZRu-5unmBXydXBpS5zNhKq5bMf5FHlZgRQEviUkNGqkasncehF_17KWw7eWwO8q_ESlvYUhoAIsTP82EE4OyCsvQ0/w121-h200/rapture.jpg" width="121" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>This is where the plot twist I wasn't expecting comes in. I would have expected a belief system like this to have originated with the marginalised and excluded, with people with no investment in the established order.<br /></div><div> </div><div>But then I happened across a radio programme** about John Nelson Darby who, I found out, was the guy who first came up with the idea of The Rapture.<br /></div><div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXAcjKO2y1dUxDMbJR2QWCqn67MsX8OADCQxt4SmZhHGgW9oZZiMpnCPrLXG3J6lGOE5vdyEB0uI9GcHeLHlJLdM82SPRlIP1eyoOZ5dDf6A5TAhUZGOF0crL3FJQgDr-eSd0oUS6xX_Q/s248/darby.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="248" data-original-width="150" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXAcjKO2y1dUxDMbJR2QWCqn67MsX8OADCQxt4SmZhHGgW9oZZiMpnCPrLXG3J6lGOE5vdyEB0uI9GcHeLHlJLdM82SPRlIP1eyoOZ5dDf6A5TAhUZGOF0crL3FJQgDr-eSd0oUS6xX_Q/s0/darby.jpg" width="150" /></a></div><br /></div><div>Darby was very much not poor, marginalised or oppressed. He was born, in 1800, to a wealthy Anglo-Irish land owning (and <a href="http://leapcastle.net/?page_id=240" target="_blank">castle-owning</a>) family and educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Dublin. An accomplished scholar and linguist, Darby won a gold medal on graduating in Classics in 1819. Influenced in his choice of career by an evangelical tutor at Trinity, Darby was ordained as a curate and, shortly thereafter, as a priest in the established Church of Ireland. And in case you think Darby wasn't already well-connected enough, he got his middle name from <i>the</i> Lord Nelson who was a family friend and Darby's godfather because of course he was.<br /><div><br /></div><div>As an evangelical and Bible scholar, Darby became unhappy with the established church, but not because it was too exclusive, or oppressive. For Darby, it wasn't unbending or exclusive enough. In particular he seems to have become disenchanted with an established church linked to a state which had already taken the first tiny baby steps towards Catholic emancipication,*** something which he saw as acts of state apostasy towards his Protestant faith.<br /></div><div> </div><div>Coming from the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendency, people like Darby, his family and peers saw any extension of the rights of the Catholic majority as a personal threat to their own status in a zero sum power game. And legislative emancipation wasn't the only threat they saw - shortly before Darby was born, the certainties and confidence of the Ascendency were violently shaken by major uprising against British rule in Ireland, the Irish Rebellion of 1798.<br /></div><div> </div><div>It was an echo, on home soil, of the turmoil that people of Darby's class saw all around the world. The Irish rebels of 1798 had some support from the French, whose own revolution in 1789 had terrified the established elites of Europe. Going back to the American Revolution and forward to the Napoleonic Wars which had been raging in Darby's youth (when some had explicitly <a href="https://www.masshist.org/beehiveblog/2018/03/from-absolute-monarchy-to-absolute-demon-identity-of-napoleon-and-antichrist/" target="_blank">identified Napoleon with the Antichrist</a>), it seemed to people who valued order, hierarchy and their personal stake in that hierarchy that the natural order of things was being violently upended. </div><div><br /></div><div>If state apostasy, violent revolution and globe-spanning wars weren't enough to put Darby into the frame of mind to contemplate the End Times, in 1819 a pro-reform rally was held in Birmingham, protesting about the fact that the city had no representative in Parliament, at a time when pocket boroughs with tiny populations and controlled by landowning interests returned members to Parliament. The same year authorities in Manchester put down a similar rally in the Peterloo Massacre. These sort of demands stuck people of Darby's class as an affront to the natural order.</div><div> </div><div>Darby broke from the Church of Ireland and went on to devise the idea of a pre-tribulation rapture in which Christ will suddenly take up the true believers (but not members of what Darby regarded as an apostate established chuch and believers in false religions) into heaven, leaving the less godly down below to endure sufferings of The Tribulation. Darby first popularised these ideas in annual meetings of Bible students organised by his influential evangelical friend, <a href="https://www.dib.ie/index.php/biography/wingfield-theodosia-a9092" target="_blank">Theodosia Wingfield, Viscountess Powerscourt</a>. </div><div> </div><div>Darby was also a co-founder of the evangelical Plymouth Brethren, where his eschatological ideas gained some traction. When the movement later split into "Open" and "Exclusive" Brethren, Darby became the de facto leader of the Exclusive Brethren, who were also known as "Darbyites." In his later years Darby undertook missionary tours of America, where the idea of pre-tribulation rapture was took hold among members of various Protestant denominations including Presbyterians, Baptists, and Congregationalists.</div><div> </div><div>It's a bit of a counter-intuitive origin story, but it is one that resonates in the current climate, where the recent big, noisy attempts to overturn the status quo, have been elite-led and profoundly reactionary in nature. The status anxiety of Darby and his class and their wish-fulfilment dream of seeing the decadent, apostate modern order smashed feels very familiar. As they say, "When you're privileged, equality feels like oppression."</div><div> </div><div>Bonus piece of trivia: in 1875, a few years before Darby died, a wealthy couple from Leamington Spa, who had become converts to Darby's Exclusive Brethren, gave birth to a son. The father was particularly devout and became an itinerant preacher, reading a chapter of the Bible to his wife and son every day after breakfast. It's a remarkable testament to the power of reverse psychology that the son was none other than Aleister Crowley, later to become the notorious black magician, occultist, self<b>-</b>styled<b> </b>"Great Beast" and "the wickedest man in the world."<b><br /></b></div><div> <br /></div><div> </div><div>*My italics. </div><div><br /></div><div>**BBC Radio 4's <i>In Our Time</i> (link to BBC Sounds <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09q3js5" target="_blank">here</a> also on YouTube <a href="https://youtu.be/U43ILppXfjg" target="_blank">here</a>, also available on <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/" target="_blank">Stitcher</a>).</div><div><br /></div><div>***e.g. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_relief_bills" target="_blank">the Roman Catholic Relief Acts of 1778 and 1791</a>.<br /></div></div></div>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-33000687143306176942021-06-27T13:10:00.008+01:002021-06-27T13:22:35.095+01:00Blackmail is such a dirty word<div><p><a href="https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/27/matt-hancock-in-line-for-16000-severance-payout-after-resigning-14834462/" target="_blank">So farewell then, Matt Hancock.</a> Caught red handed in precisely <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n639" target="_blank">the same sort of sleaze and corruption in which Boris Johnson and the rest of his cabinet are almost certainly mired just as deeply</a>. <i>The Sun </i>probably has as much dirt on Hancock's cabinet colleagues, but chooses not to release it:</p><p></p><blockquote><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Sun#Secret_stash_of_sleaze" target="_blank">Reportedly, there is a huge safe or vault in <i>The Sun</i> office, full
of embarrassing (and in some cases probably incriminating) items on
politicians and celebrities which remain (for the time being)
unpublished. <i>The Sun</i> vault is also referred to as the "black
museum" by Fleet Street hacks, and blackmail may be one of its purposes.
Another purpose may be hushing up crimes committed by friends or
supporters of Murdoch, including sex crimes later exposed under the
police's Operation Yewtree.
The retention of so much unpublished material is hard to justify:
either these stories are in the public interest and should be published,
or they are not and so should not be held in reserve.</a></blockquote><p></p><p><i>Rational Wiki</i> summary of a <i>Byline Times</i> piece. <br /><br />Apparently <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57628523" target="_blank">there will be a (probably toothless) investigation into who leaked the incriminating material on Hancock</a>. A more interesting investigation, which won't take place, would be into why Hancock was targeted in particular, and equally sleazy colleagues spared.<br /><br />Three possibilities spring to mind:<br /></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Straighforward scapegoating - the government has so far managed to dodge a lot of the blame for the excess deaths and rampant corruption which has characterised their pandemic response but maybe somebody's decided they can't escape all the blame for ever, and Matt Hancock has been set up as the sacrificial example to absolve his boss and colleagues of their share of the blame.</li><li>Something more personal - maybe Hancock is felt not to have opened up the economy quickly enough for the Murdoch media and he's being made an example of pour encourager les autres to be even more reckless with public health.*</li><li>Something even more personal - something to do with a power struggle within government, involving one of Murdoch's most loyal fifth columnists in goverment, Michael Gove and his creature, Cummings.</li></ol><p>Was Hancock thrown to the wolves at random because they just had to lighten the troika somehow, or was he the victim of a targeted character assassination because somebody important wants a change of policy or <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57627708" target="_blank">personnel</a>? The great British public, in whose interest <i>The Sun</i> allegedly publishes such stories, will probably never be allowed to know the truth.</p><p> </p><p> *If you want a flavour of the Murdoch empire's real feelings about lockdowns and the associated public health measures, here's one of their more unmuzzled outlets, the US Fox News, describing distancing measures in the pandemic as "politicized coronavirus hysteria":<br /></p><p></p><blockquote> "The riots have ripped the mask off the mainstream media politicized
coronavirus hysteria. When it was politically convenient, the media
shamed and attacked people who wanted to reopen their stores or even
gather at the beach,” Cornell Law School professor and media critic
William A. Jacobson told Fox News. “Now that rioters and looters are
gathering in large numbers, the media no longer cares about social
distancing, because the media sympathizes with them.”</blockquote><p></p><p>Brian Flood, Fox News, 1st of June 2020 - no link, because it's divisive garbage, obviously.<br /></p></div>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-5470258375174799102021-06-25T12:08:00.008+01:002021-06-25T13:20:20.782+01:00The road to autonomous hell<p>A footnote to <a href="https://downedrobin.blogspot.com/2021/06/slaughterbot-1.html" target="_blank">my last post about autonomous killer drones</a>; they're not just worrying because they're (possibly) already here. There's also a compelling military logic to keep developing such things:<br /></p><p></p><blockquote>...when you talk about drone systems, about remotely-piloted systems, these systems are comparatively easy to detect. I mean, it's not that easy if you actually want to build a counter-drone system, but it's still comparatively easy, and that's because of the uplink and the downlink ... the control links that go to the drone and the information links that come back to the pilot. So if you want to fly an unmanned system in a way that's as stealth[y] as possible, you want to cut these links, which means you need to give the system more autonomy.</blockquote><p></p><p>Dr Ulrike Franke, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACZBjm4mfm8" target="_blank">(about 2'30" into this video</a>).</p><p>Communication links are a vulnerablity, and the technology exists to get rid of that vulnerability. So the incentive to make killbots autonomous exists.</p><p>The only upside, for those of us who don't like the idea of swarms of killing machines perpetrating algorithmic carnage, is that swarms of drones which communicate and coordinate with one another retain this weakness. Maybe the take out is that it's easier to make killbots as solitary assassins than terrifying swarms, at least if the defenders have the capability to detect the swarm's chatter and use countermeasures.</p><p>History suggests that, all other things being equal, these sorts of technological constraints, rather than moral debates, tend to guide how militaries use novel ways of waging war. An interesting book review by David Fedman and Cary Karacas highlights this. They're dissecting Malcolm Gladwell's <i>The Bomber Mafia</i>,* a book which suggests that the savage fire bombing of Japanese cities in World War Two was the result of a doctrinal battle being won by brutal area bombing advocate Curtis LeMay over the more restrained advocate of precision bombing, Haywood Hansell.</p><p>Fedman and Karacas aren't having this over-simplification of history, though. In reality, they write, the dividing line between area and precision bombing had already become blurred over Europe and the path chosen owed more to pragmatism and contingency than to some moral and doctrinal face-off between two Great Men™: </p><p></p><blockquote><a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/when-pop-history-bombs-a-response-to-malcolm-gladwells-love-letter-to-american-air-power/?mc_cid=3de1754190&mc_eid=c4d8566ef3" target="_blank">It’s important to recognize that, by the time the COA [Committee of Operations Analysts] issued this report, the AAF [Army Air Force] was already engaged in the radar (or “blind”) bombing of German cities. While Gladwell devotes considerable ink to a frustrated Hansell contending with the challenges of the air war in Europe, he says little about the broader evolution of American bombing tactics. Hobbled by poor weather, the Eighth Air Force had come to accept that precision bombing was not achieving results. The use of radar, by contrast, appeared more efficacious, even if it meant accepting that bombs would fall haphazardly across urban areas. Under the pretext of destroying Germany’s railways, moreover, they had begun to bomb large swathes of entire cities. </a></blockquote><p></p><p>After a character from my favourite sci fi show in many years, <i>The Expanse</i>, kills the mad scientist who's been unleashing all sorts of horrors on the human race, he says "<a href="https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-expanse-season-2-episode-3-review-static/" target="_blank">I didn't kill him because he was crazy. I killed him because he was making sense.</a>" </p><p>If you're building a drone to evade detection and countermeasures it makes sense to make it autonomous, which is a pretty scary perverse incentive.<br /></p><p>*Disclosure - I haven't read it and, after that review, I don't feel inclined to.<br /></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-84834333145992671862021-06-06T07:16:00.002+01:002021-06-06T11:54:19.624+01:00Slaughterbot #1<p>Killer drones hit the headlines recently in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, when Azerbaijani drones seem to have decisively defeated Armenian mechanised forces. The <a href="https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2020/09/the-fight-for-nagorno-karabakh.html" target="_blank">evidence that drones played a decisive role in Azerbaijan's victory</a> seems pretty convincing (although <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/15/drones-tanks-obsolete-nagorno-karabakh-azerbaijan-armenia/" target="_blank">others have denied that this really is an extinction-level event for the charismatic megafauna of the battlefield</a>, as Charlie Stross called tanks).</p><p>Whoever's right on the state of play in the drones vs. tanks arms race, in one sense this isn't a paradigm shift. The <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/bayraktar-tb.htm" target="_blank">drones being used in Nagorno-Karabakh</a> weren't autonomous, but remotely controlled by humans. In that sense they're just another incremental step in a process of humans being able to kill other humans ever more remotely. The process had already gone far enough for George Orwell to comment on how far we as a species had anonymised killing through technology eighty years ago:<br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p>As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.</p>
<p>
They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are ‘only doing their duty’, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>To quote again that old passage from Ecclesiastes, which was a favourite of Orwell's for its simple, resonant language:</p><p></p><blockquote>The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. </blockquote><p></p><p>Except, maybe there is a new thing under the sun. Remote killing where no human directly identifies a target and an algorithm decides who's friend or foe, who lives and who dies. Concerned AI researchers have been making a noise about this possibility for some time. The recent sci fi short film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU" target="_blank"><i>Slaughterbots</i></a> highlighted the danger. <i>Slaughterbots</i> is fiction, but according to a UN report cited by Ed Nash,<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STM_Kargu" target="_blank"> a <i>Slaughterbot</i>-style autonomous drone</a> may have already killed without any human being directly involved in the target selection. Last year.<br /></p><p>If you didn't already think 2020 was unsettling enough, this five minute video might change your mind:<br /></p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6X3IXvYbDrU" title="YouTube video player" width="420"></iframe><p><b class="highlight"><br /></b> </p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-22810817840029066672021-06-05T08:05:00.000+01:002021-06-05T08:05:05.966+01:00A small miscellany <p><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto"> Just some random stuff that caught my eye recently:<br /></span></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto">Marion Stokes: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgVdZDFGqcs" target="_blank">the woman who recorded everything</a>. The strangely compelling story of the former librarian and activist who spent 35 years from 1979 filling 40,000 VHS tapes with the daily TV news and current affairs programmes of the day. Madness, but there was method in it (along with a ton of footage not preserved anywhere else, which is now being digitally archived for posterity). <br /></span></li><li><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto">While we're on the subject of archives and memory, the lies and broken promises that underpin the UK's current Brexit reality have been so numerous and shameless that it's exhausting to keep track of them all. Which is why the good folk at <i>Yorkshire Bylines</i> have produced <a href="https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/the-davis-downside-dossier/" target="_blank">The Davis Downside Dossier</a> so you don't have to. 12 more or less inconsequential upsides and 178, often catastrophic, downsides spotted at the time of writing and counting. Named in honour of David Davis's infamous boast that </span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto">"there will be no downside to Brexit at all, and considerable upsides."</span></li><li><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto">Brazil: the title of Terry Gilliam's absurdist dystopia in movieland, <a href="https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/05/the-brazilianization-of-the-world/" target="_blank">also the location and pattern of a real-life dystopia in our world</a>. A depressing piece which argues that Brazil, the country of the (fake) future, with its intractable neo-feudalist inequalities could be the template for all our futures, if the present trajectory of elite capture of the political economy continues. </span></li><li><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto">Bitcoin: a green disaster with, to paraphrase David Davis, no upside and considerable downsides. John Quiggin argues that <a href="https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-time-to-divest-from-bitcoin-is-now,15137" target="_blank">the time to divest from Bitcoin is now</a>.</span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto"></span></li><li><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto">Favourite pizza topping? Back in the Sixteenth Century, when Pope Pius V was kicking back from the day job of excommunicating England's Good Queen Bess, or instituting <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/10/october-7-feast-our-lady-victory-michael-novak/" target="_blank">the feast of Our Lady of Victory</a> after the successful outcome of the Battle of Lepanto, he probably liked to chill with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6XvMKdD2tY" target="_blank">a rose water and sugar pizza</a> and a Michelangelo fresco, while waiting in vain for Netflix to be invented.<br /></span></li></ul><p><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto"><br /></span></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-53370796255251319262021-06-04T15:05:00.002+01:002021-06-25T13:15:05.588+01:00The bro smirk, the smirk of dominance<p></p><p> </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji6CABqQD0V44BuRP5jY4tISgotVe6WPedHmjP57yi9ZPFYS-86NEmLAbt-QzrwVvywfXmId5_GnYT8BHgCahDpVCilnHKzH6IaCrw3CEQvIOo4nn5c9yTBrwl-oSG5PDn0aTYl5npE9k/s1246/donald-trump-smirk.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1246" data-original-width="1076" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji6CABqQD0V44BuRP5jY4tISgotVe6WPedHmjP57yi9ZPFYS-86NEmLAbt-QzrwVvywfXmId5_GnYT8BHgCahDpVCilnHKzH6IaCrw3CEQvIOo4nn5c9yTBrwl-oSG5PDn0aTYl5npE9k/s320/donald-trump-smirk.jpg" /></a></div><br />In yet more <a href="https://downedrobin.blogspot.com/2021/05/public-to-left-of-him-astroturf-to.html" target="_blank">Britain Trump</a> news, Former Guy may be <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-trying-hard-recruit-politicians-112238100.html" target="_blank">disappearing ever more inexorably into madness and failure</a> but, Cheshire Cat-like, his trademark smirk lingers on, on the faces of the Trump tribute band currently governing the UK. <p></p><p>Today's pound shop Donald is Grant Shapps, the über-Trumpy get-rich-quick grifter <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/revealed-grant-shapps-get-rich-quick-guide-or-it-michael-green-s-8209978.html" target="_blank">who used to pretend to be a multimillion-dollar web marketer under an assumed name</a>. Here he is hardly even trying to justify <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56068362" target="_blank">reversing the irreversible</a>, or <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/indian-variant-coronavirus-steve-reed-b1848302.html" target="_blank">being wildly inconsistent about controlling borders in a pandemic</a>:<br /></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Portugal has been added to the "amber list" for travel just a week after thousands of English football fans flew to Porto for the Champions League final.<br /><br />Grant Shapps, said it was a "difficult decision", but he was smirking at the time. <br /><br /> <a href="https://t.co/TNzYk2ttRF">pic.twitter.com/TNzYk2ttRF</a></p>— Simon Gosden. Esq. #fbpe 3.5% 🕷🇪🇺🇬🇧🏴☠️🦠💙 (@g_gosden) <a href="https://twitter.com/g_gosden/status/1400542223461199875?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 3, 2021</a></blockquote><p>Of course, he's not alone. </p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdfHW7GV8arSmfEsbJ2l3P3n3pSticpqBX0IiXbnXT_jRPOLkewlZyCpGXtdzHhTB96tph35eGtkMVroWP9GgxfD1H2DUDwsMsbxovGkciFdCY24KfeVFrfFnxJc9VlEzSEHQrK2yt_bc/s2000/PP+smirk.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdfHW7GV8arSmfEsbJ2l3P3n3pSticpqBX0IiXbnXT_jRPOLkewlZyCpGXtdzHhTB96tph35eGtkMVroWP9GgxfD1H2DUDwsMsbxovGkciFdCY24KfeVFrfFnxJc9VlEzSEHQrK2yt_bc/s320/PP+smirk.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8RYPkmaahkLV7tCSv8lPfNdiWNtexMtcNqtus7GrUVa3xgEAX3Wbx8zXA2Po-DLGHXtjg2KCCnjGuk4Vy2RRXKzDKDoI1DRd4CXw1jwgoXNpDeHHF0x1_lyl7LIIxQwARgLFs2tkTDCQ/s1280/BJ+smirk.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8RYPkmaahkLV7tCSv8lPfNdiWNtexMtcNqtus7GrUVa3xgEAX3Wbx8zXA2Po-DLGHXtjg2KCCnjGuk4Vy2RRXKzDKDoI1DRd4CXw1jwgoXNpDeHHF0x1_lyl7LIIxQwARgLFs2tkTDCQ/s320/BJ+smirk.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>From Patel to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boris-johnson-brexit-eu-negotiations-b1770132.html" target="_blank">Johnson</a> the perma-smirk of <span class="osc_tag_system osc_error_green" id="osc_tag_system_21">invulnerability</span><span class="osc_error_black" id="osc_tag_system_black_as_509"></span> is now as much a part of the Conservative brand as the <a href="https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2018/04/30/tory-power-stance-thing-need-read-today-favourite-responses-online/" target="_blank">Tory Power Stance</a>. <br /></p><p> As Ophelia Benson said of the Trump smirk, back in the days of Former Guy's pomp:</p><p></p><blockquote><a href="http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2019/the-order-of-the-smirk/" target="_blank">It’s the bro smirk, the smirk of dominance.</a></blockquote><p></p><p>It would be interesting to see if he's still smirking <a href="https://uk.style.yahoo.com/donald-trump-already-closed-down-100900980.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAM7B1gDZFBdTGVdhMjg0MWYqCP3z52nDqadeGqfnWhoi2y2emM8MJSqoeI8ZK0NsigmFp1nvUhoMZ7s1FidVB0XHpS8eISBfsB3vLtYimIEjRyiXCCaJXrR-YH58TyzK33YWX1bmzv2QgVlfghlRWrxBm3PL-RuQhQQQMJSDv52k" target="_blank">now that his influence doesn't even extend to being heard on his low-traffic blog</a> (I feel your pain, Donny) and how long the smirk will persist on the lips of the Britain Trump crew who were, presumably, counting on their special relationship with Former Guy to make a success of "Global Britain."<br /></p> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <p></p><p><span style="opacity: 0; position: absolute; user-select: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://twitter.com/g_gosden/status/1400542223461199875?s=20</span></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-91485952466476361132021-05-31T15:19:00.004+01:002021-05-31T15:38:15.562+01:00Public to the left of him, AstroTurf to the right, stuck in the middle with Britain Trump<p><span><span> </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyTxsZL8Hv2Jp2p-q9vY2PoG447w4vDUtc5aaeMDxfmuqLsPjrtiLQ3CxzLAvbmj5MLT_J4E9yOJe2h5pI2S9RSsu04QJr3eIRY_9BMwevM_lzCLeGD58_wx3yAWp3rY4T5xHqdx6vJlg/s255/TrumpJohnson.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyTxsZL8Hv2Jp2p-q9vY2PoG447w4vDUtc5aaeMDxfmuqLsPjrtiLQ3CxzLAvbmj5MLT_J4E9yOJe2h5pI2S9RSsu04QJr3eIRY_9BMwevM_lzCLeGD58_wx3yAWp3rY4T5xHqdx6vJlg/s0/TrumpJohnson.jpg" /></a></span></span></div><span><span><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span><span>Remember when the USA was being run by that strange orange whackadoodle who used to say crazy shit about injecting yourself with bleach? Remember how that Very Stable Genius saw the world exclusively in relation to himself, and paid this </span></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">"compliment" to our very own Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson?</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></p><blockquote><a href="https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2019/07/23/donald-trump-said-brits-call-boris-johnson-britain-trump-the-only-5-replies-you-need/" target="_blank">"They're saying Britain Trump. They call him Britain Trump. That's a good thing. They like me over there."</a></blockquote><p></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">The bleach advice aged like milk, but while no literate Brit ever called Johnson "Britain Trump", except to mock the </span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">massive satsuma-faced toddler,* the comparison has resonated with people who are far smarter and more thoughtful than Trump himself. For Simon Wren-Lewis, <a href="https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2021/05/cummings-puzzle-about-delayed-lockdowns.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MainlyMacro+%28mainly+macro%29" target="_blank">the parallels between the two are tragic rather than comic</a>:<br /></span></span></p><p><span><span></span></span></p><blockquote><p><span><span>One of the persistent features of Trump’s period as
president was his obsession with Fox News. He preferred to get his
information from Fox News than internal government briefings. In time
Fox News started to understand this, and some of its journalists started
directly addressing him in their shows. Why did Trump do this? Because
all populists are narcissists who want to be admired their people. Most
of the time, Fox News obliged...</span><br /></span></p><span><span>...If we believe Cummings, Johnson too is obsessed by the
media read by ‘his people’, and in particular his own paper The
Telegraph. He looks to them to check he is being admired. So when this
and other right wing papers started publishing anti-lockdown nonsense,
it got to him. As the Prime Minister who had locked down the economy he
was no longer admired by these newspapers. This overrode any ability to
understand the reasons why lockdown was necessary (and quick and hard
lockdowns particularly), so he became over the summer a lockdown
skeptic. </span></span></blockquote><p><span><span><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span>The parallels between Trump and Johnson are striking but they're <a href="https://downedrobin.blogspot.com/2018/01/were-going-to-win-so-much-were-going-to.html" target="_blank">not exactly breaking news</a>. What is interesting is where the far right/libertarian pressure that drove Britain Trump to botch the lockdowns is coming from. Because the </span></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>"anti-lockdown nonsense" Wren-Lewis talks about didn't come from out of nowhere.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>As Wren-Lewis points out, a lot of it is being propagated by the right-wing press, presumably reflecting the agenda of its oligarch owners.<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>But </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>what's behind the <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/covid-hoaxer-who-posted-photos-23435007" target="_blank">Covid denialists who posted photos of empty NHS wards and claimed that the pandemic's a hoax?</a> or <a href="https://www.indy100.com/politics/laurence-fox-nhs-mayoral-election-b1842303" target="_blank">the
celebrity bobblehead who whinged that he paid the salary of NHS staff,
who should be thanking <i>him</i>, rather than the other way round</a>?</p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Did this furious anti-mask, anti-vaxx, anti-NHS anti-statist intervention arise spontaneously from the grass roots? An earlier post by Simon Wren-Lewis presents evidence that this is probably not the case. Back in 2018, he <a href="https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/02/i-last-talked-about-this-question-from.html" target="_blank">blogged about where the UK public was at, and it didn't seem to be with the small state libertarian vision of freedom from the big state</a>:<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><blockquote><span><span><span>When the public are asked about who should own and run various activities, there is clear support for more rather than less public involvement....</span></span></span></blockquote><p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><blockquote><span><span><span>...Note that only about 10% want privatisation of the NHS, which has continued rapidly under this government. A government that reduces ernment spending and taxes, and pushes privatisation of the NHS, seems like a government of the few and not the many.</span></span></span></blockquote><p></p><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The post-pandemic outpouring of appreciation for our very statist National Heath Service seems to validate what Simon says.Whatever you think about the claps for carers, or the media focus on Captain Tom's fundraising efforts, appreciation for the institutions we have and the people who work for them seems to be genuine. <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-applications-to-study-nursing-soar-as-nhs-inspires-new-recruits-amid-pandemic-12221120" target="_blank">Applications for nursing courses for autumn 2021 were up nearly a third from the previous year.</a> </p><p>You might still argue that Brits (or at least the English majority in our fracturing Union) are socially conservative, but you'd have a way harder time arguing that they're libertarian small statists.</p><p>There's evidence that the "lockdown scepticism" that didn't come directly from the right wing press was largely the result of an <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=astroturf" target="_blank">AstroTurf</a> campaign funded by people with deep pockets and the same far right-libertarian agenda as the right wing media owners. A by-no-means-exhaustive list of examples includes:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>UsforThem</li></ul><p></p><blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>UsforThem, a parents' lobbying group, appears to operate as part of a
network that disseminates pseudoscience on the pandemic, for instance,
around the role of schools in transmission, masks, safety measures, as
well as other issues such as PCR tests and COVID-19 death
certification... <br /></p><p class="has-drop-cap is-style-default"><span class="has-inline-color has-bt-red-color">...I</span>n June, UsforThem coordinated a pre-action legal letter to Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, obtained by <i>Byline Times</i>
under Freedom of Information, threatening the Government with a
judicial review if it did not re-open schools without safety measures. <br /></p><p class="is-style-default">The
letter was prepared by the same global multi-billion-dollar law firm,
DLA Piper, which has advised the Government on its COVID-19 response. (<a href="https://bylinetimes.com/2021/04/01/disinformation-lobbyists-and-brexit-business-bosses-finance-conservative-covid-sceptics-pr/" target="_blank">Nafeez Ahmed<i>, Byline Times</i></a>).</p></blockquote><p class="is-style-default"></p></blockquote><p class="is-style-default"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The Oxford COVID-19 Evidence Service, a disinformation hub apparently cooked up by individuals linked to finance, the American right and a network of right wing lobby groups. The Oxford COVID-19 Evidence Service's dubious claims seem to have been thoroughly debunked, but not before undermining pblic trust in public health responses to the pandemic:</li></ul><p class="is-style-default"></p><blockquote><blockquote>The damage to public discourse has been done. Large segments of the population seem to be convinced that the scientific community is fundamentally divided on how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. But this is untrue. (<a href="https://bylinetimes.com/2020/09/23/scamademics-right-wing-lobbying-groups-reviving-herd-immunity-in-the-uk/" target="_blank"><i>Byline Times</i></a>).</blockquote></blockquote>This has worrying echoes of big tobacco's concerted, and unfounded, attempts to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on the links between smoking and cancer. <a href="https://ethicalhour.co.uk/doubt-is-our-product-the-dark-marketing-tactics-big-oil-took-straight-from-the-big-tobacco-playbook/" target="_blank">Doubt is their product</a>.<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART)</li></ul><p class="is-style-default"></p><blockquote><blockquote>HART was co-founded by Graham Hutchinson, who has coordinated the group prior to and since its inception. He was listed as a member of the group until mid-February.<br /><br />Hutchinson is an active proponent of COVID-19 pseudoscience and other conspiratorial disinformation. He has claimed that “vaccination is pointless” and implied that vaccines are part of a genocidal global conspiracy: “An urgent message for those wanting a Vaccine Passport. Do you realise your passport will need to be kept up-to-date which means they could at any point, for example, say you needed to have a vaccine a week to do anything? #Cashcow #Control #Genocide.” ...</blockquote></blockquote><p></p><blockquote>...Elsewhere, [Hutchinson] tweeted that “99% of the corona bollocks was to get rid of Trump” and praised Donald Trump for being “against climate” and “chasing paediphile [sic] rings”. (again, <a href="https://bylinetimes.com/2021/04/01/disinformation-lobbyists-and-brexit-business-bosses-finance-conservative-covid-sceptics-pr/" target="_blank"><i>Byline Times</i></a>)</blockquote><p></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Then there are wealthy individuals on the libertarian right, like Simon Dolan, the Monaco tax exile who took Matt Hancock
and Education Secretary Gavin Williamson to court over the restrictions, arguing
the Coronavirus regulations were "<a href="https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/uk-news/2020/12/01/businessman-loses-court-of-appeal-challenge-over-covid-19-rules/" target="_blank">the most onerous restrictions to personal liberty</a>" and furiously denounces both public health measures and any suggestion that he promotes dangerous conspiracy nonsense (which he self-evidently does). Or the property tycoon <a href="https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2019/11/15/who-is-richard-tice/" target="_blank">Richard Tice</a>, who has raged against people staying away from offices for reasons which have nothing at all to do with the waning profitability of his huge commercial property portfolio, obviously.</li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The Great Barrington Declaration advocating a ‘herd immunity’ approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, <a href="https://bylinetimes.com/2020/10/13/koch-funded-pr-agency-aided-great-barrington-declaration-sponsor/" target="_blank">a product of the Charles Koch Foundation-funded American Institute for Economic Research (AIER)</a>.</li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>As Nafeez Ahmed's article points out, <a href="https://bylinetimes.com/2020/10/13/koch-funded-pr-agency-aided-great-barrington-declaration-sponsor/" target="_blank">the Conservative Party’s own COVID Recovery Group (formerly the European Research Group) seems to be tied in with this shady lobbying network because of course it is</a>.</li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span></span><span></span>And then there's the Reclaim Party, fronted by that NHS-hating <a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Laurence_Fox" target="_blank">celebrity bobblehead</a>. Apparently the asset manager and political donor Jeremy Hosking, who came in at 351 in the 2019 Sunday Times Rich List, <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/laurence-fox-sadiq-khan-london-mayoral-elections-2021-b927044.html" target="_blank">provided £5 million for the bobblehead to spend time allegedly campaigning for the position of London Mayor</a>, while splashing his anti-"woke" anti-lockdown, anti-socialised healthcare talking points all over the front pages of compliant newspapers (it's amazing what £5 million will do for the profile of a flaky no-hope candidate). </li></ul><p class="is-style-default"> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOzGazAT0L2AZvButQbnsgrcJ2oO6UlKSip0iPRs5Qjpdetl3LQC7L7VF-mrpH65fJu2cGGMi0HYH5vRCteA5Ec_r1QQvoC5vQcKCOEYSETMGK496zbAHb0eYio_n33av1NFMqlmaaZxM/s1097/bobblehead.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1097" data-original-width="874" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOzGazAT0L2AZvButQbnsgrcJ2oO6UlKSip0iPRs5Qjpdetl3LQC7L7VF-mrpH65fJu2cGGMi0HYH5vRCteA5Ec_r1QQvoC5vQcKCOEYSETMGK496zbAHb0eYio_n33av1NFMqlmaaZxM/s320/bobblehead.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Attack of the celebrity bobbleheads.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p class="is-style-default">I could go on, but you get the picture. You've got a public which is broadly OK with the idea of socialised healthcare, and have been broadly amenable to the various measures needed to get the country through the pandemic on one side.** On the others you have a few polemicists in the right wing-media, speaking out on behalf of a largely AstroTurf lockdown backlash being fabricated by a tiny clique within the economic elite, afraid of the inevitable big government element of any serious response.</p><p class="is-style-default">And in the middle is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, paralysed by indecision, like a donkey between two hay bales.<br /></p><div class="tenor-gif-embed" data-aspect-ratio="1.3756906077348066" data-postid="17599743" data-share-method="host" data-width="100%"><a href="https://tenor.com/view/boris-boris-johnson-confused-huh-what-gif-17599743">Boris Boris Johnson GIF</a> from <a href="https://tenor.com/search/boris-gifs">Boris GIFs</a></div><script async="" src="https://tenor.com/embed.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<p></p>***<br /><p><span><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span>*</span></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span><span>© <a href="https://twitter.com/StuartMaconie/status/1153707411179495424" target="_blank">Stuart Maconie</a>.</span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span>** There are real people who are very much not OK with lockdown measures, but the objections are, as far as I can see, to do with<span> individual economic circumstances, not the sort of implacable ideological opposal to the principle of lockdowns we've seen from the activists who've been trying to undermine them. If your job is the one that goes, or you're not eligible for furlough, or you're one of the left-behind self-employed who fell through the cracks, of course you're going to be desperate and angry. </span><span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span><span>*** .gif <a href="https://tenor.com/users/pafster" target="_blank">credit</a>. </span><span> </span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-40131189149319259412021-04-24T16:42:00.007+01:002021-04-24T19:26:18.313+01:00Cleopatra's calendar<p>Cleopatra VII of Egypt is a historical celebrity for a number of reasons, chiefly her fruitful political and romantic entanglement with Julius Caesar, her doomed political and romantic entaglement with Mark Antony, her subsequent suicide by asp and her status as Egypt's last Pharaoh.* <br></p><p>More recently, she's received more recognition as a wily and ruthless player in the Ptolemys' deadly game of thrones, a political figure in her own right, rather than the caracatured exotic über-seductress of powerful men.</p><p>All of this stuff's historically interesting, but I'd say that her most lasting legacy isn't necessarily a dramatic life filled with passion and power politics and its retelling down the ages, but something even more ubiquitous; the calendar which most of the world uses today.<br></p><p>So here's the argument. Most of the world today uses the Gregorian solar calendar. The Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, as a slightly more accurate upgrade to the earlier Julian calendar.</p><p>The Julian calendar is, of course, named after Julius Caesar, who introduced it to Rome in 45 BC, replacing the earlier Roman calendar. </p><p>Unlike the transition from Julian to Gregorian, which was a refinement of the same basic calendrical system, the Julian reform was fundamental, substituting a new, solar calendar for the old Roman lunisolar calendar which, by this stage, had some serious issues:</p><p></p><blockquote><p> <a href="http://www.web40571.clarahost.co.uk/roman/calhis.htm" target="_blank">Around 715BC the twelve month [Roman] calendar was introduced, based on the phases
of the Moon. It takes on average 29.5 days between one new moon and the next
and so a twelve-month lunar year lasts 354 days but an extra day was added
because even numbers were unlucky. The twelve months had between 28 and 31 days
in each to make the year last 355 days. February was the shortest month with 28
days and every other year a whole extra month - called Mercedonius which
alternated between 22 days and 23 days - was inserted after the 23rd day of
February to try to keep the calendar in line with the solar year of
approximately 365 days. At the end of Mercedonius the remaining five days of
February were taken, so Mercedonius was followed by the 24th of February. But
the arithmetic did not quite work - the system gives an average duration for
the year of 366.25 days - and the calendar slowly drifted away from the seasons
once more. Inserting an extra period to correct the calendar is called an
intercalation.</a></p><p><a href="http://www.web40571.clarahost.co.uk/roman/calhis.htm" target="_blank">
The situation was made worse because the calendar was not a publicly
available document. It was guarded by the priests whose job it was to make it
work and determine the dates of religious holidays, festivals, and the days
when business could and could not be conducted. Through both carelessness and
abuse, the intercalations were not made even according to the flawed rules that
had been laid down. By the time Gaius Julius Caesar took power in the mid 40s
BC the calendar was in a mess and he decided to make a major reform. </a></p></blockquote><p></p><p>So where does Cleopatra fit in?</p><p>Well, back in 48 BC, Caesar, having routed Pompey the Great in battle, had pursued his hard-pressed rival to Egypt. Ptolemy XIII, in a misguided attempt to curry favour with the victorious Caesar, had Pompey assassinated, a gesture which backfired, leading an enraged Caesar to side with Ptolemy's co-ruler and sister, Cleopatra, depose Ptolemy and place his new ally (and lover) on the throne of Egypt.</p><p>In 47 BC, Cleopatra bore a son, Caesar probably being the father, while Caesar went off to do more civil war stuff. </p><p>But this wasn't the end of their relationship. In 46 BC, Cleopatra and her little brother (and co-ruler in name only), Ptolemy XIV, came to Rome and stayed at Caesar's villa. A few things came out of this visit, including Cleopatra entertaining Rome's great and good, Caesar declaring the Egyptian queen a "friend and ally of the Roman people" and a golden statue of Cleopatra being put up in the newly-built Temple of Venus Genetrix.</p><p>There was one, more consequential, result of Cleopatra's stay in Rome, according to Pliny the Elder, who identifies the Greco-Egyptian astronomer, <a href="https://tonynetone.wordpress.com/2020/03/17/sosigenes-of-alexandria/" target="_blank">Sosigenes of Alexandria</a>, who was presumably part of Cleopatra's retinue, as the guy who actually devised the Julian calendar, proposed by Caesar in 46 BC and introduced in 45 BC. In this context, the radical move from a lunisolar to a solar calendar makes sense, as <a href="https://calendars.wikia.org/wiki/Egyptian_calendar" target="_blank">the Egyptians already used a solar calendar.</a></p><p>So, yeah, you could argue that without Cleopatra, Rome wouldn't have adopted the Julian solar calendar, the direct ancestor of most widely used calendar used in the world today.**</p><p>In a world without Cleopatra, the superpower of the ancient world might have refined its calendar along existing lunisolar lines and the modern world's dominant calendar might have had a lot more in common with, for example, <a href="https://jewfaq.org/calendar.htm" target="_blank">the Hebrew calendar</a>.</p><p>There are, of course, counter-arguments:</p><p>1. We only "know" that Sosigenes devised the calendar from one very short passage (<a href="https://www.liquisearch.com/sosigenes_of_alexandria" target="_blank">Pliny's <i>Natural History</i> Book 18, 210-212</a>) so it's not certain that Sosigenes really was the calendar guy. Aristarchus of Samos has also been credited as coming up with the Julian calendar, although there's even less direct evidence for this version.</p><p>2. If Pliny was right, and it was Sosigenes, then it would be more accurate to call it Sosigenes' calendar, not Cleopatra's, which would give my post title way less name recognition.</p><p>3. Name-checking Cleopatra might also make this a version of the <a href="https://sites.psu.edu/leadership/2020/01/31/the-dangers-of-the-great-man-theory/" target="_blank">questionable</a> "<a href="http://history.furman.edu/benson/fywbio/carlyle_great_man.htm" target="_blank">great man</a>" version of history (in this case "great woman", obviously). In a counterfactual world where Cleopatra, or Julius Caesar, or both of them, had never been born, it's likely that Rome would still have dominated Ptolemaic Egypt as a client state before absorbing it completely, so Greco-Egyptian scholarship and the eventual adoption of a calendar based on the Egyptian calendar might have been on the cards anyway.</p><p>But it's still at least plausible to think that the world's most widespread calendar might not be preeminent had chance not led to Julius Caesar meeting Cleopatra. And it's about as good an illustration of <a href="https://nouvellehistoiresite.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/cleopatras-nose/" target="_blank">the Cleopatra's nose theory of history</a> as I can think of.</p><p><br></p><p>*<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_pharaoh" target="_blank">Roman pharaohs</a> don't count.</p><p>**Not something I'd thought about until I came across a reference to the Egyptian influence on the Julian calendar in <a href="https://youtu.be/Vl1Yvl0U29Y" target="_blank">this video</a>.<br></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-43391488358162570132021-04-18T07:49:00.006+01:002021-04-24T17:40:17.344+01:00Paleoart: the next generation<p>The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. The deep past is so weird and wonderful it's practically another planet. I've enjoyed the sheer otherness of artists' attempts to recreate scenes from deep time since I was a kid. Here's an illustration of "early forms of life" from the pages of the Odhams Encyclopaedia for Children I was given for my 6th birthday. The artist was one John Rignall:<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcKcD8hnxvVIV_Rzilb28gryTDO9nOADnnRC1SAWp6-5faLmPO-L0bg02lFnSHNzaJ0lOmiDlpiZ3MTjIZyUNA-Uw_WimWBolHffkdFkOv8rUmIktvMEpFejbm0U1wHUIJLgflBXeHdjA/s2048/John+Rignall.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1489" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcKcD8hnxvVIV_Rzilb28gryTDO9nOADnnRC1SAWp6-5faLmPO-L0bg02lFnSHNzaJ0lOmiDlpiZ3MTjIZyUNA-Uw_WimWBolHffkdFkOv8rUmIktvMEpFejbm0U1wHUIJLgflBXeHdjA/s320/John+Rignall.jpg" /></a></div><p>It's the sort of busy scene, packed with weird and wonderful detail which might appeal to a child, and it did. Looked at from a half century later it shows how far and fast reconstructions of the Mesozoic world have changed. From the kangaroo-posed therapod to the offended-looking tail-dragging sauropod to the absence of feathery dinos that aren't <i>Archaeopteryx</i>, the ancient creatures all have a retro look.<br /></p><p>OK, it's an impressionistic overview for kids, including an assemblage of plants and animals most of which lived many millions of years apart from one another. But even the more "realistic" dino books I had as a kid featured reconstructions like this one by Zdenek Burian, of semi-aquatic <i>Brachiosaurus</i>es adopting a watery lifestyle to take the enormous weight off their feet:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFC8E7sw_sUCZoxmd96PNwL7aErt6SgrYIPnSPXnGerWv5E2JngDF43FHZcW5x8TeCCpEIispfx1bdU3yHOPTqWCI_TLaSOgOcGm7OaFopW3W6lmpwMUpddXhzLCvLpDRBVF7J2oHbaxQ/s1024/Zdenek-Burian_Brontosaurus.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFC8E7sw_sUCZoxmd96PNwL7aErt6SgrYIPnSPXnGerWv5E2JngDF43FHZcW5x8TeCCpEIispfx1bdU3yHOPTqWCI_TLaSOgOcGm7OaFopW3W6lmpwMUpddXhzLCvLpDRBVF7J2oHbaxQ/s320/Zdenek-Burian_Brontosaurus.webp" width="320" /></a></div><p>Some people are, apparently, a bit fed up that the dinosaurs they thought they knew as kids have been superseded by new best guesses at what these creatures looked like in life. Personally, I find a lot of the new paleoart keeps the sense of wonder I had as a child new and fresh.</p><p>For a taste of what I mean, I can warmly recommend a visit to <a href="https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Dr Mark Witton's wonderful paleoart-themed blog</a>. It's full to the brim with strange, beautiful and astonishing visions of past life by Mark and many others. From my personal favourite for their sheer weirdness, the <a href="https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-we-think-giant-pterosaurs-could-fly.html" target="_blank">giant azhdarchid pterosaurs</a>, <a href="https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2016/09/a-salute-to-erythrosuchidae.html" target="_blank">to bizarre big-headed predators from the Triassic</a>, <a href="https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2018/02/a-mural-for-dippy-restoring-celebrity.html" target="_blank">or </a><i><a href="https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2018/02/a-mural-for-dippy-restoring-celebrity.html" target="_blank">Diplodocus</a></i>, there are wonders on every page. And also discussions of why (scientists think) these critters look the way they're illustrated. </p><p> There is, for example, an interesting post on <a href="https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2016/10/exposed-teeth-in-dinosaurs-sabre-tooths.html" target="_blank">lips versus exposed teeth in illustrations of extinct carnivores</a>. That post seemed, at least to this non-expert, to make a pretty solid case for assuming lips in all but a very few cases. Interestingly, John Rignall's therapod dinosaur from my childhood encyclopaedia, although its teeth are showing slightly, looks as if it has lips. At the very least, Rignall has made it ambiguous and not as boldly and ostentatiously toothy as many lipless carnivorous dinosaur illustrations of the time:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKElpbur8Kl_4Ks7h53116p6DksBJZvAOfZj0JNqSKiKcR_VNkheD_Gch-IZ4DKMFcdIAhDxOG2i94ri9e33SRycKfqxnEdJJvnEBJ1Vxhv0tMV3qtDfcSax0p9xyTjtLReEZTe2IETII/s888/Antrodemus.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="707" data-original-width="888" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKElpbur8Kl_4Ks7h53116p6DksBJZvAOfZj0JNqSKiKcR_VNkheD_Gch-IZ4DKMFcdIAhDxOG2i94ri9e33SRycKfqxnEdJJvnEBJ1Vxhv0tMV3qtDfcSax0p9xyTjtLReEZTe2IETII/s320/Antrodemus.png" width="320" /></a></div><p>Also interesting that, from all the big, fierce , famous, carnivorous dinosaurs he could have chosen, (<i>T Rex, Allosaurus, Megalodon</i>), Rignall chose the obscure <i>Antrodemus</i>, a contested name for <a href="http://www.dinochecker.com/dinosaurs/ANTRODEMUS" target="_blank">what most paleontologists would call bits of an <i>Allosaurus</i></a>. Although Rignall might be up there with modern paleoart with what seems to be lips on his <i>Antrodemus</i>/<i>Allosaurus</i>, the kangeroo posture and palms-down hands is definitely retro dino - compare and contrast with this modern reconstruction of the posture of <i>Allosaurus jimmadseni</i>:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1MU48yPfNAes_UA-bCnm1G4z7KWO3fep7UsQDSqXLDhru-1Uov4DrCp-5eDXH3Je3Lc72jbfr1o9A0_yT70MZdhKh-LugFPbyj38v1izMEVT7UD1SPOkKiw-KWF9CH0P4E_tZb5un9KQ/s1024/Allosaurus_jimmadseni_skeletal.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="348" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1MU48yPfNAes_UA-bCnm1G4z7KWO3fep7UsQDSqXLDhru-1Uov4DrCp-5eDXH3Je3Lc72jbfr1o9A0_yT70MZdhKh-LugFPbyj38v1izMEVT7UD1SPOkKiw-KWF9CH0P4E_tZb5un9KQ/s320/Allosaurus_jimmadseni_skeletal.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image credit: Scott Hartman (<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Allosaurus_jimmadseni_skeletal.png" target="_blank">Creative Commons Attribution</a>)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>The other great thing about Mark is that, although there's lots of solid science in there, he doesn't take himself too seriously and he's generous with the playful pop culture references; see <a href="https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2013/06/what-daleks-xenomorphs-and-slasher.html" target="_blank"><i>What Daleks, xenomorphs and slasher movies tell us about palaeoart</i></a> and here, <a href="https://twitter.com/MarkWitton" target="_blank">on his Twitter feed</a>, Mark imagines what a gorilla the size of King Kong might actually look like, (given the biomechanics of very large animals, not much like a gorilla):</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk6GG7OYr8Bvz-r_LR8RTYg_sYeVFrEKCxLu1bk-5OIWfEcdVdlIQVmQp0PmyZxX909RIy0FlqT1Dix2uO8PkF8UiWDDk3Nz_t4Pc_cPsQY3Z7xon3wNA_NcF4TDleIxG1D6JqXw-R6G4/s888/Kong.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="888" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk6GG7OYr8Bvz-r_LR8RTYg_sYeVFrEKCxLu1bk-5OIWfEcdVdlIQVmQp0PmyZxX909RIy0FlqT1Dix2uO8PkF8UiWDDk3Nz_t4Pc_cPsQY3Z7xon3wNA_NcF4TDleIxG1D6JqXw-R6G4/s320/Kong.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"<a href="https://twitter.com/MarkWitton/status/1377580325560324096?s=20" target="_blank">It was skeletal and circulatory weakness killed the beast. We've come up with a patch for these issues with the release of Kong 2.0.</a>"<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>This is fantastic (in both senses of the word), but it's worth remembering that scientist's current understading of the constraints on the size and shape of animals is built on some old and well-established principles. As Stephen Jay Gould once noted:</p><p></p><blockquote><a href="http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/size_and_shape.html" target="_blank">Galileo first recognized this principle in his "Discorsi" of 1638, the masterpiece he wrote while under house arrest by the Inquisition. He argued that the bone of a large animal must thicken disproportionately to provide the same relative strength as the slender bone of a small creature.</a></blockquote>For more speculation on the biology of oversized apes (in this case of the human variety), this video on the biology of giants by YouTuber Trey the Explainer also has some fun with the topic of biological scale:<p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dbOSHoa7h3E" title="YouTube video player" width="420"></iframe></p><p><br /></p><p></p><p>I'm liking this stuff very much. Almost as much as this awesome poster for the, sadly unmade, Hammer movie <i>Zeppelins v Pterodactyls</i>. Yes, I know I've shared this image before but honestly, just look at this thing. As Dr Johnson almost said, when a man is tired of pterodactyl-on-Zeppelin action, he is tired of life.<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9vLR1edRIQXxcd92IJSBFoCa_N0NTDeUnVljMa1Rj9fZK62S_qc2ixL7XY6nBE7N5j6FVL8wE_qt0XXqFbOV9VHZkmSXDW2sdmQZWA9O7-ifX0IivQBTYuyZdwgGgZ-ATM_E19tXo0zI/s1600/tmp_1108-_zeppelin-v-pterodactyls-1501342352.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1164" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9vLR1edRIQXxcd92IJSBFoCa_N0NTDeUnVljMa1Rj9fZK62S_qc2ixL7XY6nBE7N5j6FVL8wE_qt0XXqFbOV9VHZkmSXDW2sdmQZWA9O7-ifX0IivQBTYuyZdwgGgZ-ATM_E19tXo0zI/s320/tmp_1108-_zeppelin-v-pterodactyls-1501342352.jpg" /></a></div><br />Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-71945132517474293602021-04-11T12:17:00.026+01:002021-04-11T12:31:00.094+01:00Props to the bros<p>Relative to the average YouTube vid, the one embedded below is a bit long (50 mins+),
and it's quite a deep dive, but it's also worth your time for the way it unpacks an interesting tale of historical and technological contingency.</p><p>tl;dr*: the
Wright brothers were the first to fly a heavier-than-air craft** and did
so using an engine which was, by subsequent standards, pretty feeble
(12-16hp). One innovation which helped them to translate this miserly
amount of power into powered flight was figuring out how to build an
efficient propeller.</p><p>On the other side of the Atlantic, aviation
pioneers in France were struggling with stumpy, inefficient paddles for
propellers, but building ever more powerful, efficient engines in an
attempt to overcome this limitation and get their creations off the ground.<br /></p><p>Then, in 1908,
Wilbur Wright rocked up in France to demonstrate one of his aircraft.
French customs unpacked the machine for some sort of check and managed
to damage it in the process. Wright had to get his aircraft repaired and
rebuilt with the help of locals, some of whom had been working with
French aviation pioneers. This was the moment when the secret of the
Wright's propeller technology stopped being a secret.</p><p>The
fortuitous combination of Wright propellers and powerful French engines
quickly became one of the main drivers of the aviation firsts of pioneers like Louis
Blériot and Henri Farman, the early French dominance of the aviation
industry and the swift evolution of the aeroplane from astonishing
novelty to a useful device with practical applications.<br /></p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SgoPPg8oVt8" title="YouTube video player" width="420"></iframe><br /></p><p>It's an interesting tale, far more so than the abbreviated list of "firsts" in less detailed accounts and I like the way it both does justice to the Wrights' genius and the contribution of French engine makers who, in struggling to overcome the limitations of primitive propeller design turned a disadvantage into industry dominance.<br /></p><p>*I guess the video equivalent should be tl;dw.</p>**<i>Not</i>
<a href="https://firstflight.org/alberto-santos-dumont/" target="_blank">Alberto Santos-Dumont</a> - the video examines the claims that
Santos-Dumont was the first to achieve powered flight and demolishes
them pretty convincingly. What I particularly like about this video is
that it treats Santos-Dumont's actual achievements with seriousness and
respect, rather than dismissing him completely for not having achieved
this world-changing first. Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-40421185877350370012021-04-02T16:52:00.006+01:002021-04-19T12:22:01.924+01:00Before the Ever Given<p>The cost of one ship blocking the Suez Canal for a week, plus the resulting backlog is being estimated at some $1bn (£730m), <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/business/suez-canal-ever-given-cost-b1825370.html" target="_blank">according to Akshita Jain in the <i>Independent</i></a>.</p><p>It could have been worse. A lot worse. </p><p>Imagine an event which blocked the canal for eight solid years. </p><p>I shouldn't have to imagine, because this is an actual thing which happened in my lifetime. Until the canal came back in the news, I'd wholly forgotten that a second Suez crisis affected maritime traffic for far longer than the 1956 debacle. The canal was closed due to the Six Day war in 1967 and wouldn't re-open again until June 1975, after Israeli forces had withdrawn from the Sinai Peninsula and the Egyptians had cleared the canal of sunken ships and mines. </p><p>Here's a nice summary of the long blockage, including the story of the ships which were navigating the canal when the Six Day War broke out and were trapped for eight years:</p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4DiXRCo7eBs" title="YouTube video player" width="420"></iframe><p>It's a historical event which gets <span class="osc_tag_system osc_error_green" id="osc_tag_system_1">comparatively</span> little attention, which is a pity, because <a href="https://voxeu.org/article/1967-75-suez-canal-closure-lessons-trade" target="_blank">as a natural experiment into the effect of introducing trade barriers into places where trade previously flowed freely</a>, this feels pretty damn relevant right now, especially here in Global Britain™.</p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Breaking news: Bus blocks major trading route! <a href="https://t.co/K6xWDYSYIN">pic.twitter.com/K6xWDYSYIN</a></p>— MrProgressiveAlliance 🇬🇧🇫🇷🇩🇪🇪🇺🌍 (@MrYesWeCan) <a href="https://twitter.com/MrYesWeCan/status/1377525639163437057?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 1, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <p>While we're on the subject of historical blunders by wannabe global powers that turned out to no longer be quite as awesome as they thought, there's one other Suez-related tale that's worth re-telling. Namely, one of history's most bizarre tragicomedies, the hellish 18,000-mile (29,000 km) journey that Russia's Second Pacific Squadron took from the Baltic to the Tsushima Strait off Japan and one of the most consequential naval defeats in Twentieth Century history. The Russians could have had a much shorter voyage had they not upset the entity which really was "Global Britain" back in 1905 and which closed the Suez Canal to the hapless Russians. </p><p>Here's a very good telling of the whole globe-spanning organisational and logistical nightmare:<br /></p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9Mdi_Fh9_Ag" title="YouTube video player" width="420"></iframe><p>And, for the sale of completeness, the final catastrophe that ended the epic voyage:</p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BXpj6nK5ylo" title="YouTube video player" width="420"></iframe><p>One of the participants in this naval omnishambles survives to this day as a floating museum in St Petersburg; the <a href="https://www.liquisearch.com/armored_cruiser/1880s_-_rise_of_the_protected_cruiser" target="_blank">protected cruiser</a> <i>Aurora</i>, which, more than a decade after taking part in the Battle of Tsushima, fired the shot which signalled the attack on the Winter Palace and the start of the Russian Revolution. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh28yrpb6WStuFAv968GiHnDkYsjkMiL3miLpqEPfJy94x6HDVAEnHkBVzfFj8rfoYPWy5eSzRggHQ0qh9gho0YxOkQeBy19l5PiDPYnup_nGqwQXUbLEDuBAwIdzjdu_49zLNNGz6IXaE/s1024/1024px-Aurora_1903.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="646" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh28yrpb6WStuFAv968GiHnDkYsjkMiL3miLpqEPfJy94x6HDVAEnHkBVzfFj8rfoYPWy5eSzRggHQ0qh9gho0YxOkQeBy19l5PiDPYnup_nGqwQXUbLEDuBAwIdzjdu_49zLNNGz6IXaE/s320/1024px-Aurora_1903.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-12900882272784424392021-03-28T11:40:00.002+01:002021-03-28T14:08:43.488+01:00Finding Nemo (again)<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLx1ujDlhAgkbKFMD3aHEqoRXPxqiYnjEShbDnTitiqoHEIY1rsxb2yhqind1FVun9CoiZmwT7MYVOCsGV3wJP3o6XSqwQkVNynJAnwl8-OM8TEOqiQXvGSQd6oWM5m9RADpUx0fKidbc/s500/Mini+Nautilus.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="446" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLx1ujDlhAgkbKFMD3aHEqoRXPxqiYnjEShbDnTitiqoHEIY1rsxb2yhqind1FVun9CoiZmwT7MYVOCsGV3wJP3o6XSqwQkVNynJAnwl8-OM8TEOqiQXvGSQd6oWM5m9RADpUx0fKidbc/s320/Mini+Nautilus.png" width="320"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From my blog post <a href="https://downedrobin.blogspot.com/2010/04/we-all-live-in-retro-submarine.html" target="_blank"><i>We all live in a retro submarine</i></a> from April 2010<br></td></tr></tbody></table><br><p></p><p>I just had a reminder of this photo, which I took in Brighton over a decade ago. A few things have changed since then. My son, who was just about the right size to captain this hobbit-scale sub is now as tall as me (give or take; it's hard to tell when his default posture's the stereotypical teenage slouch). </p><p>But I'm still coming across subs out there which look like takes on Jules Verne's fictional <i>Nautilus</i>. A more or less unrelated search recently came back with this:<br></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVSe0TS2S-cS5vkWkcn70bICblQuxwTZJrpifQqSS-NuHcNlXoiRACrhM40wxAmFyCC4aNQ2R6oUSdd_S_S9Dlr-wUGse_EgFIv05ImTC_fqPz2m9hnle9rHmtmc94OBtfqd_-hnQFElw/s1450/20210326_190237.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1450" data-original-width="1195" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVSe0TS2S-cS5vkWkcn70bICblQuxwTZJrpifQqSS-NuHcNlXoiRACrhM40wxAmFyCC4aNQ2R6oUSdd_S_S9Dlr-wUGse_EgFIv05ImTC_fqPz2m9hnle9rHmtmc94OBtfqd_-hnQFElw/w252-h320/20210326_190237.jpg" width="252"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Credit: H I Sutton's <a href="http://www.hisutton.com/LTTE%20Sea%20Tigers%20sneak%20attack%20craft%20and%20midget%20subs.html" target="_blank"><i>Covert Shores</i> blog</a><br></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Although it dates from the around same era when I took my picture, this is no cartoonishly cute sculpture, or theme park attraction, but an attempt at an actual working submarine (well, a semi-submersible, anyway), designed and built with deadly purpose by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, better known as the Tamil Tigers, in the closing days of the Sri Lankan Civil War.</p><p>Like the sculpture, this is on a far smaller scale than Nemo's <i>Nautilus</i> (it's a midget semi-sub, probably only around a 10th of the length of <a href="https://www.vernianera.com/Nautilus/" target="_blank">the fictional 70 metre <i>Nautilus</i></a>). Interestingly, Hutton also compares it to a Nineteenth Century submersible, but a real one. That's because, like the Confederate Civil War-era sub the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Hunley_(submarine)" target="_blank"><i>Huntley</i></a>, the Tamil Tigers' vessel looks as if it was designed to attack ships by ramming them with a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spar_torpedo" target="_blank">spar torpedo</a> attached to the pole sticking out of its bow.</p><p>This isn't the only interesting oddity to be found in the <a href="http://www.hisutton.com/" target="_blank"><i>Covert Shores</i></a> blog, which features a compelling selection of unusual naval tech, both current & vintage. Highlights include Russia's <a href="http://www.hisutton.com/Poseidon_Torpedo.html" target="_blank">huge, terrifying nuclear powered/armed torpedo</a>, named "Posiedon" (Посейдон), after citizens were given a vote on the name of Russia's latest weapon of mass destruction (can't help feeling disappointed that they didn't end up with a doomsday weapon called <a href="https://www.thefactsite.com/boaty-mcboatface-facts/" target="_blank"><i>Nukey McNukeface</i></a>). Then there's quite a bit of stuff on (mainly Latin Ameican) <a href="http://www.hisutton.com/Narco%20Subs%20101.html" target="_blank">narco subs</a>, the <a href="http://www.hisutton.com/Russian-Navy-In-Tartus-Syria.html" target="_blank">use of marine mammals for naval operations</a>, the mysterious death of <span class="js-about-item-abstr"><a href="http://www.hisutton.com/Commander%20Crabb%20-%20What%20Really%20Happened.html" target="_blank">Lieutenant-Commander "Buster" Crabb</a>, <a href="http://www.hisutton.com/Prohibition_Smugglers_Sub.html" target="_blank">a prohibition-era moonshine-smuggling sub</a> and the <a href="http://www.hisutton.com/Thunderball%20-%20classic%20CosMoS%20SDV%20in%20classic%20Bond%20movie.html" target="_blank">James Bond-ish</a> hardware of </span><span class="js-about-item-abstr">Swimmer Delivery Vehicles underwater "chariot" attack craft and various stealthy/low-profile vessels.</span></p><p><span class="js-about-item-abstr">Another treat from Covert Shores is <a href="http://www.hisutton.com/Nautilus%20-%20homage%20to%20Jules%20Verne.html" target="_blank">Hutton's own interpretatation of Verne's <i>Nautilus</i></a>, which is closer to a visualisation of what was described in the novel than the <a href="https://insidethemagic.net/2018/05/about-the-nautilus-a-deeper-dive-into-jules-vernes-iconic-submarine/" target="_blank">Harper Goff's looser, but nonetheless wonderful, visualisation</a>. </span></p><p><span class="js-about-item-abstr">It wasn't a search for this iconic proto-steampunk design which originally led me to Hutton's blog, though. I was initially looking for information on another a piece of retro futurism from a later era, namely this sleek deco-looking experimental helicopter design from the 1930s:</span></p><p><span class="js-about-item-abstr"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuwFlOQOiyFD8lsKd7zC7DIwq-yYydbm_UY5AYpDwuOVvuV18IZnI2ybobtwQNFOhm3xDUzSE4cY3yBDORAXOrjOrtmqQY_xMGMpXLDOVz2r1Mo0UnRLD7jXmp5NPXC13UKItKpUSkn3Y/s1200/dorand-gyroplane-g20-complete-1947.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="694" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuwFlOQOiyFD8lsKd7zC7DIwq-yYydbm_UY5AYpDwuOVvuV18IZnI2ybobtwQNFOhm3xDUzSE4cY3yBDORAXOrjOrtmqQY_xMGMpXLDOVz2r1Mo0UnRLD7jXmp5NPXC13UKItKpUSkn3Y/s320/dorand-gyroplane-g20-complete-1947.jpg" width="320"></a></div>Like the Tamil Tigers' mini-<i>Nautilus</i>, the <a href="https://oldmachinepress.com/2015/03/28/dorand-gyroplane-g-20-g-ii/" target="_blank">Dorand G20 </a><span class="js-about-item-abstr"><span class="js-about-item-abstr"><a href="https://oldmachinepress.com/2015/03/28/dorand-gyroplane-g-20-g-ii/" target="_blank">Gyroplane</a> looks like something that's sprung out of the pages of vintage Science Fiction into real life. In this case, if you ever had a mental picture of the ubiquitous helicopters which flitted around the art deco skyscrapers in Huxley's <i>Brave New World</i>, carrying the Alphas and Betas to and from their places of work, consumption or leisure, it probably looked like something like this.</span></span><p></p><p><span class="js-about-item-abstr"><span class="js-about-item-abstr">Like the Tamil mini sub, though, this helicopter was orignally built with more aggressive intentions - there was an idea that the Dorand would replace the spotter plane which was kept on board France's massive inter-war <i>Surcouf</i> cruiser submarine (<a href="http://www.hisutton.com/Surcouf.html" target="_blank">that's the link which originally brought me to the <i>Covert Shores</i> blog</a>).<br></span></span></p><p><span class="js-about-item-abstr">The Dorand Gyroplane isn't <i>quite</i> as insanely art deco as the never-flown <a href="https://www.eaa.org/en/eaa-museum/museum-collection/aircraft-collection-folder/1938-bugatti-model-100-racer" target="_blank">Bugatti racing plane</a> from the same era, but it comes pretty damn close.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlurq2TsXfpMoDQHUV2Xdnyfgv6vRNYcfSf_10GbJSABfmyE2hGUHAfZd7qafhUnsGNNum19MWGcmaboi-bYGOI4pqy02_h6VAYXT5JYlLS0n-1rcVbo8Xy11ywP9bepuCG2vNp6hXg0w/s804/Bugatti+100.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="428" data-original-width="804" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlurq2TsXfpMoDQHUV2Xdnyfgv6vRNYcfSf_10GbJSABfmyE2hGUHAfZd7qafhUnsGNNum19MWGcmaboi-bYGOI4pqy02_h6VAYXT5JYlLS0n-1rcVbo8Xy11ywP9bepuCG2vNp6hXg0w/s320/Bugatti+100.jpg" width="320"></a></div><span class="js-about-item-abstr">Definitely at the more elegant end of the very wide spectrum of French aircraft designs from the 1930s. As somone once said:</span><p></p><p><span class="js-about-item-abstr"></span></p><blockquote><a href="https://web.ipmsusa3.org/content/french-flying-boats-wwii" target="_blank">When one looks at French aircraft of the period immediately before and during World War Two, it is evident that there were two schools of thought when it came to aircraft design! One school was to design elegant, graceful and beautiful aircraft. The other was to see just how ugly they could make the airplane and it still fly and perform the duties it was designed for.</a></blockquote><p></p><p><span class="js-about-item-abstr"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDDxIEIlZQ-6c-H5elv3ktVr9La77Xu8fN8g3is3pcCPaZKDmihi2r-ywmExBK7W30FcBn4BwcEUk92NvHILK6Y2Yi5fTOGb6Vs4A8XrpNHaINj37r7iXba11dL7r0gzYgmi3lAs-5ZYo/s1050/br410.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="1050" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDDxIEIlZQ-6c-H5elv3ktVr9La77Xu8fN8g3is3pcCPaZKDmihi2r-ywmExBK7W30FcBn4BwcEUk92NvHILK6Y2Yi5fTOGb6Vs4A8XrpNHaINj37r7iXba11dL7r0gzYgmi3lAs-5ZYo/s320/br410.jpg" width="320"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%A9guet_410" target="_blank">Mon Dieu, quel bordel!</a></td></tr></tbody></table><span class="js-about-item-abstr"><br> Now there's a design that wouldn't ever make it it into fiction. Oh, hang on...</span><p></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTvquK9hTCiliMue3s7RrG6HYciCBMGlkxWHy3RmQWYk8lXvNxscJ1wjaFpdurxlo5Ps9F1hhGlFv2_Gx-T3zjXRoMBP6hyJz2hlo0e_i5H5QVfSuLeXrsDF-jsrEiUwi_tJTqeS5mpsM/s300/canadian-air-force-300x174.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="174" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTvquK9hTCiliMue3s7RrG6HYciCBMGlkxWHy3RmQWYk8lXvNxscJ1wjaFpdurxlo5Ps9F1hhGlFv2_Gx-T3zjXRoMBP6hyJz2hlo0e_i5H5QVfSuLeXrsDF-jsrEiUwi_tJTqeS5mpsM/s0/canadian-air-force-300x174.jpg"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Canadian Air Force (according to <a href="https://karenjlloyd.com/blog/2008/11/12/feature-favorites-south-park/" target="_blank"><i>South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut</i></a>).<br></td></tr></tbody></table><br><span class="js-about-item-abstr"><br></span><p></p><p><span class="js-about-item-abstr"><br></span></p><p><span class="js-about-item-abstr"><br></span></p><p><br></p><p></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-54474034933809954502021-03-24T19:23:00.010+00:002021-08-12T22:23:00.558+01:00Low-maintenance voters<p>With all the desperate flag-waving and public displays of jingoism, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Boris Johnson's UK is a tribute act to the Thatcher years. But it occurs to me that one thing has changed fundamentally; aspiration. </p><p>Right through the Thatcher years and beyond, the Conservatives and New Labour, made a very conscious electoral pitch to "aspirational" voters. Way into the noughties, pundits were referencing the upwardly-mobile "<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4119695.stm" target="_blank">Mondeo Man</a>" and his ilk as the demographic groups that were key to gaining and maintaining power.</p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">The canny shift the </span><span class="r-18u37iz">modern Conservative </span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Party and its media enablers have made seems to be to mobilise an entirely different* set of voters. After a decade of austerity and stagnant wages, like Trump, they've identified a new group of voters to woo. People who don't believe in aspiration any more, because they don't see it in action, but are furious and want to punish somebody for what their lives have become. </span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Angry people, made too cynical to believe that either own lives, or the lives of their kids will ever get better, but who'll vote for anybody who can turn their anger on an external enemy; migrants, minorities, the "woke."</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">It makes sense in its own warped terms. In a post-austerity, post-Brexit, post-Covid world, it's going to be tough to appeal to aspiration. If you feed aspirations you will eventually be expected </span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">to actually <i>fulfil</i> aspirations. If you mobilise voters with no aspirations beyond seeing somebody else worse off, then you literally don't have to do anything except make the designated hate groups' lives shittier. Which is way easier to achieve than actually making people's lives better.</span></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">You have to hand it to the UK's post-Trump Trumpists - by finding angry people with low expectations and keeping them angry they've built themselves the ultimate low-maintenance political base. People so cynical that they no longer expect their lives to get better, but will vote for anybody who'll take their pain out on somebody else.<br></span></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">By weaponising spite, they've brought a whole new meaning to the phrase "the tyranny of low expectations" and come pretty damn close to actual political genius.<br></span></span></p><p> Efficient sadopopulism. Mondeo Man didn't see that one coming.<br></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMCuVlKjp1PSFhUYKLgt3fU3CA6Rodg7Y5wcqb9bKsR6yX758vYyeMNChJ4qK6EXwMLnOVtcBIszN5sNBgpXyNzJQmlzUHuAlcKBQG2zIJNyf2CW4d_-h0QPgpDyU9eHhn6eqGGDFb8Rc/s1026/Mondeo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="1026" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMCuVlKjp1PSFhUYKLgt3fU3CA6Rodg7Y5wcqb9bKsR6yX758vYyeMNChJ4qK6EXwMLnOVtcBIszN5sNBgpXyNzJQmlzUHuAlcKBQG2zIJNyf2CW4d_-h0QPgpDyU9eHhn6eqGGDFb8Rc/s320/Mondeo.jpg" width="320"></a></div><br> <p></p><p> </p><p>* I say "entirely different, but it's quite possible that many of todays angry and disillusioned voters may be formerly aspirational Mondeo Men or Worcester Women for whom the idea of upward mobility has become a sick joke.</p><p> </p><p><u>Update</u></p><p> Synchronicity:</p><p></p><blockquote>The Ford Mondeo has reached the end of the road, the company announced today.<br><br>The saloon car that became a byword for ‘Mondeo Man’ – the middle-ground voter that could swing elections – has been killed off by the rise in popularity of sports utility vehicles and the push towards electrification, the manufacturer has confirmed today. </blockquote>More <a href="https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-9401919/End-road-Mondeo-Man-Fords-long-running-family-car-AXED.html?mrn_rm=rta" target="_blank">here</a>.<br><p></p><p> </p><p><br> </p><p><br></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-86901058711890644002021-03-14T19:00:00.005+00:002021-03-14T20:37:28.971+00:00Banging your head against a brick wall, AKA Twitter moderation<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzPadj0ziIr1APh5HVTmFPrVYJu711cgE2Cs234PtOlk1EW3SNW_sNyWVp5jr4mi-EfvbwjGwkLr1ho0mOkY3dc5FKsmeOy2b1Xd1yaxjL3P8Zxk6QNqs9uH-ztGVOtkbbZIuZdBa4EwI/s403/twitter-icon-brick-wall.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="403" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzPadj0ziIr1APh5HVTmFPrVYJu711cgE2Cs234PtOlk1EW3SNW_sNyWVp5jr4mi-EfvbwjGwkLr1ho0mOkY3dc5FKsmeOy2b1Xd1yaxjL3P8Zxk6QNqs9uH-ztGVOtkbbZIuZdBa4EwI/s320/twitter-icon-brick-wall.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>I've just been taught a slightly annoying, but worryingly instructive, lesson.</p><p>Contrary to my New Year's resolution, I'm probably still spending more time on Twitter than I ought. Then I got this message:</p><p></p><blockquote>Hi Andrew King Your account, *******, has been locked for violating the Twitter Rules. Specifically for: Violating our rules against promoting or encouraging suicide or self-harm.</blockquote><p></p><p>Oh boy. What terrible message had I posted? Well, here's my offending tweet, in all its gory glory:<br /></p><p></p><blockquote>I guess deciding to *stop* repeatedly banging your head against a brick wall doesn't actually count as a policy. </blockquote><blockquote>But it would sure feel better than continuing to repeatedly bang your head against a brick wall.</blockquote><p></p><p>OK. Well, you could argue this was a facetious reply (judge for yourself: screenshot in the context of the tweet I was replying to at the bottom of this post).* And, sure, it's a clichéd metaphor, so I should definitely hand myself in to the style police.<br /></p><p>But "encouraging suicide or self-harm?" Seriously? Even if you were totally unfamiliar with the idiom and took those two sentences literally, the literal sense is that banging your head against a brick wall is a bad thing and stopping this activity would definitely feel better.</p><p>Anyway, I was given the options of deleting the offending tweet or appealing against the suspension, so I appealed. After all, I figured, some key words had probably been picked up by an algorithm, so if I appealed, presumably an actual human would look at the tweet and realise that it had been flagged in error? <br /></p><p> Wrong, apparently:<br /></p><p></p><blockquote> Hello, <br /><br />Thank you for your patience as we reviewed your appeal request for account, *******, regarding the following:<br /><br />Our support team has determined that a violation did take place, and therefore we will not overturn our decision.<br /> <br />You will not be able to access Twitter through your account due to violations of the Twitter Rules, specifically our rules around:<br /><br />Violating our rules against promoting or encouraging suicide or self-harm<br /><br />In order to restore account functionality, you can resolve the violations by logging into your account and completing the on-screen instructions.<br /> <br />Thanks,<br /><br />Further violations will lead to suspension of your account. <br /><br />Twitter</blockquote><p></p><p>So I ended up deleting the tweet to get back on the platform. Annoying and slighly worrying, in the sense that another innocent metaphor could see me banned from the platform, which would be irritating, given that I've done nothing wrong, but I'll live.</p><p>But what makes me slightly more than irritated and more like angry and concerned, is the context. Moderation, after all, is there for a reason. There are genuinely anti-social, threatening, harrassing, violent messages, hate speech and, yes, actual messages which really do promote or encourage suicide or self-harm.</p><p>I know that because, like almost everyone else on Twitter, I've seen some pretty unpleasant stuff. For example, one of this individual's tweets popped up in my timeline the other week:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy_QCs-s3WHW2XenoTDpdd0J9m4OcTCf_RbkznrZS9uz17-eAGsD1CehLRj-oaIRNJgD7jA07PLK6u1vVhUGEu2zvj4E9iPftKX5ZZA9SKTc0qwZcGuzf25Kf-071CpIpDeQX9-5Cuzm8/s1620/fash+1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1620" data-original-width="1134" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy_QCs-s3WHW2XenoTDpdd0J9m4OcTCf_RbkznrZS9uz17-eAGsD1CehLRj-oaIRNJgD7jA07PLK6u1vVhUGEu2zvj4E9iPftKX5ZZA9SKTc0qwZcGuzf25Kf-071CpIpDeQX9-5Cuzm8/s320/fash+1.jpg" /></a></div><p> Yep, a real life, out and proud white supremacist Nazi, praising <a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/George_Lincoln_Rockwell" target="_blank">George Lincoln Rockewell</a>, an actual, if clownishly ineffective, Nazi. I had a look it this account's feed and reported a few genuinely dodgy tweets. With, as far as I can tell, no result at all. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY6Q1tS1Ffh0gIfiJ-HAyIETwx79DiDSfpeCDIgrvcDKAVVVsA68dlbXsrDJNUa-s8hxDG3x62BwkkGNj7OkMEB3vAWYKPEKbrzjw0QiXRS_oWzxPVWlXJ1sJ4XmTFTQLtoRvOXUbz6mg/s869/fash+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="831" data-original-width="869" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY6Q1tS1Ffh0gIfiJ-HAyIETwx79DiDSfpeCDIgrvcDKAVVVsA68dlbXsrDJNUa-s8hxDG3x62BwkkGNj7OkMEB3vAWYKPEKbrzjw0QiXRS_oWzxPVWlXJ1sJ4XmTFTQLtoRvOXUbz6mg/s320/fash+4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p></p><p>Twitter may be cool hosting white supremacists and Nazis, but props to <a href="https://linktr.ee/" target="_blank">Linktree</a>, a social media landing page which, old fogey that I am, I hadn't heard of before, but which at least has the gumption to kick creeps like this off its platform. Here he is whining about it:<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnnbRgKKRf2W1q5Knz8Z3ldR414WhEiJ0_dSNERpFMwekVeSbu3jjHEAvCWgk8C7GkRquRqNR5Y08TWA2ItctYbJ30MmneZMce3LwKG7-OCix8M2_ZfGN3UzTKWPaPb-jCucHDI9vmno8/s1179/Fash+2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="1179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnnbRgKKRf2W1q5Knz8Z3ldR414WhEiJ0_dSNERpFMwekVeSbu3jjHEAvCWgk8C7GkRquRqNR5Y08TWA2ItctYbJ30MmneZMce3LwKG7-OCix8M2_ZfGN3UzTKWPaPb-jCucHDI9vmno8/s320/Fash+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Sadly, Blogger and YouTube, like Twitter, apparently still seem to think that this sort of content is OK (Odysee, like Linktree, is a thing I'd not even heard of but, as for Gab, we all know that like Parler it's just a sewer of conspiracy theories and far-right wingnuttery).</p><p> So there we are. Use a perfectly normal English idiom on Twitter and risk having you account permanently deleted. Be an actual Nazi-supporting white supremacist with an account that exists to direct hate against minorities and your political opponents and Jack Dorsey's minions apparently see no problem at all (ditto the people at Google who run YouTube and Blogger). Something is very much not OK here.</p><p>What's going on? Is it that, for all their "community guidelines", social media platforms have a vested interest in keeping extremist clickbaity accounts alive, because controversy drives engagement and grows the platform? That would explain why it took so long for multple breaches of community guidelines by individuals like Katie Hopkins to build up to a Twitter ban, much engagement and hate having already been generated before any action was taken.</p><p>Apparently, all it takes is provocation-driven engagement and <a href="https://youtu.be/CaPgDQkmqqM" target="_blank">the brass neck to deny what you quite obviously are</a> to keep the Twitter police off your back:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDv3cV_gPEwmsbZBdXoRW-HEfa7i_baFpgOM6Eed4_yXgLa-lkY267reP2cBmo34OTEFYA476x9wxPz-dvCjEejX2VjUPTTQrLUzE_OgpIj_-C92G4fPCHn99aYFeA0wyPHnIe7hmwOfc/s853/fash+3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="367" data-original-width="853" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDv3cV_gPEwmsbZBdXoRW-HEfa7i_baFpgOM6Eed4_yXgLa-lkY267reP2cBmo34OTEFYA476x9wxPz-dvCjEejX2VjUPTTQrLUzE_OgpIj_-C92G4fPCHn99aYFeA0wyPHnIe7hmwOfc/s320/fash+3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anyone with eyes, and/or ears and a functioning brain?<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Hmmm...<br /><p>*Context of my tweet:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDvQWCaHrIKL-V_l6SOvX_ycM03n6-yx4nydKjCdyuEgPeXq7fUChrybui-3xzNc4EjxUJra6qHxcBCJwfnynVRxrPaNPEcKCMJjMpceUPfMnKhsC-cQn6sjE5lWMh9ac9NgAopfvi2CU/s888/No+policy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="484" data-original-width="888" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDvQWCaHrIKL-V_l6SOvX_ycM03n6-yx4nydKjCdyuEgPeXq7fUChrybui-3xzNc4EjxUJra6qHxcBCJwfnynVRxrPaNPEcKCMJjMpceUPfMnKhsC-cQn6sjE5lWMh9ac9NgAopfvi2CU/s320/No+policy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU1frOoMGTkZSXaGnG0477DLoc6sIvV3MezaePUQ6GEngkRgwUc8e7mzrDv6dJWdd-bFZ6ro1SGCdUGr2E1kGKlLJpvfhrGM5IovrHDpXW8Rg3CLHE2B_qhEU0Jj7RJYSJ_eda3Rb7x1g/s618/Inkedviolation+1_LI.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="618" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU1frOoMGTkZSXaGnG0477DLoc6sIvV3MezaePUQ6GEngkRgwUc8e7mzrDv6dJWdd-bFZ6ro1SGCdUGr2E1kGKlLJpvfhrGM5IovrHDpXW8Rg3CLHE2B_qhEU0Jj7RJYSJ_eda3Rb7x1g/s320/Inkedviolation+1_LI.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419359887373244512.post-89627195999629681342021-02-22T07:30:00.036+00:002021-02-22T16:36:56.082+00:00It was 60 years ago today...<p>To mark a friend's 60th birthday, and because why the hell not, I'm taking a quick step 60 years back in time. </p><p>It's Wednesday 22 February 1961, and <i>Rubber Ball</i> by Marty Wilde is at the top of the UK singles chart. Wilde (born Reginald Leonard Smith), is one of Britain's foremost American-inspired rockers, along with those other young Turks, Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard. Here's a vido of Marty performing his hit with Cliff Richard on the 23rd of February 1961 (look out for the Buddy Holly-inspired vocal stylings):<br /></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FiNFXg6AwLA" width="420"></iframe>
<p>As of now, Marty, like his more famous partner in that duet, is still with us. As his Wikipedia entry notes:</p><p></p><blockquote><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Wilde#Career" target="_blank">On 9 October 2020, Wilde entered the UK Albums Chart at number 75 with Running Together. It was released on his own Pushka label, and featured his daughters Kim and Roxanne Wilde, with input from son Ricky. Wilde thus has the distinction of UK chart success, as either a singer or songwriter, across eight consecutive decades.</a></blockquote><p></p><p>Hint: it's never too late...<br /></p><p>The UK's Conservative, old Etonian Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan has just completed four years in office, having taken over from Anthony Eden as a result of Eden's failing health and fatally damaged reputation after the national humiliation of Suez. </p><p>As in February 2021, the USA has a new Democract with Irish ancestry in the White House, although JFK is a sprightly 43 years old when taking office, a contrast with Jo Biden's venerable 78 years. The world didn't know it on February 22nd, but the new Kennedy administration already had a mini Suez-style fiasco of its own in the planning stage, as Kennedy and his advisors weigh up the options for the upcoming <a href="https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1765.html" target="_blank">Bay of Pigs invasion</a> (spoiler; none of the options are good).<br /></p><p> Also in the States, February 22nd sees the release of the biopic <i>The Great Impostor</i>, starring Tony Curtis as the serial impostor <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/ferdinand-waldo-demara-great-imposter-con-artist-fraud-a9080991.html" target="_blank">Ferdinand Waldo Demara</a>, whose career of deception ncluded faking the identities of a doctor of psychology, a civil engineer, a sheriff's deputy, an assistant prison warden, a hospital orderly, a lawyer, a child-care expert, a teacher, a monk, an editor, a cancer researcher, and a naval surgeon.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhSLp_OiDttmRGbtDy5YAPKh6MD1iqJe0_KelBUREqzuYBo-ASJqa9VGOCMSeDWQXcIWw4z9613ST2tPqCJRpEzpsA2u1EVOm5y6a3xTfm3qcj6o-Cnu31VsDdLSVHmOGGU0Dqv6YE0yU/s400/Great_Imposter_1961.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="249" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhSLp_OiDttmRGbtDy5YAPKh6MD1iqJe0_KelBUREqzuYBo-ASJqa9VGOCMSeDWQXcIWw4z9613ST2tPqCJRpEzpsA2u1EVOm5y6a3xTfm3qcj6o-Cnu31VsDdLSVHmOGGU0Dqv6YE0yU/s320/Great_Imposter_1961.jpg" /></a></div><p>The real (?) Demara had some interesting tips for aspiring rogues:</p><p></p><blockquote>"...if you come into a new situation (there's a nice word for it) don't
join some other professor's committee and try to make your mark by
moving up in that committee. You'll, one, have a long haul and two, make
an enemy."</blockquote><p>Why try to rise up through the existing committee structure, Demara reasoned, when you can start your own committee? <br /></p><blockquote>"That way
there's no competition, no past standards to measure you by. How can
anyone tell you aren't running a top outfit? And then there's no past
laws or rules or precedents to hold you down or limit you. Make your own
rules and interpretations. Nothing like it. Remember it, expand into
the power vacuum!"</blockquote><p></p><p>Which is quite an interesting take from a couple of angles. Firstly, the notion of moving into vacant ecological niches clearly has wider applications than just con artistry; from starting a business venture to chosing an area of academic research, to your chosen form of artistic expression, it's a legitimate strategy.</p><p>Secondly, it's interesting to look back at the career of a genuine outsider from 2021, a historical moment where even our impostors are fake. Demara came from a formerly prosperous family which had fallen on hard times due to the Great Depression by the time he ran away from home aged 16 to become a Cistercian monk. To succeed as an impostor, Demara had to use his wits to practice his deceptions.</p><p>In contrast, our highest-profile contemporary rogues, from Donald J Trump, to Nigel Farage (currently running an investment grift which recycles his old "take back control" schtick), to pro-virus activist and professional whiner, Laurence Fox, tend to come from firmly establishment, often elite, backgrounds.<br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKmsnzn7iANsWjPJ9fmF_uKQt45x8IKOkO-s0zTOENSzXVg3WgMTOUNFTOjFMupQPmOy5mojiZ7d1imZchcLy2sOOwVedL8O2KOc1klNXBQcjs5M1foQA4xnTYdhEVaKF7LlYSW2t1GJU/s1920/Scam.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKmsnzn7iANsWjPJ9fmF_uKQt45x8IKOkO-s0zTOENSzXVg3WgMTOUNFTOjFMupQPmOy5mojiZ7d1imZchcLy2sOOwVedL8O2KOc1klNXBQcjs5M1foQA4xnTYdhEVaKF7LlYSW2t1GJU/s320/Scam.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Caveat</b> <b>emptor.</b></td></tr></tbody></table>Our most notorious contemporary deceivers aren't outsiders, shrewdly taking advantage of gaps in the hierarchy which others weren't smart enough to spot. They're insiders, born to privilege, leveraging their connections within existing power structures, rather than adroitly spotting and exploiting gaps in those structures. Their biggest, and most successful, con is to convince their dupes that they're the plucky outsiders taking on the establishment, when they <i>are</i> the establishment.<br /><p>Perhaps the most egregious example is Alexander Boris de Pfeffle Johnson, a man who couldn't be more part of the establishment furniture if he was one of the leather armchairs in White's of St James's. The problem with these fake impostors, as opposed to real rogues like Demara, is that there's no selective pressure on them to have any actual talent. Where your deceptions succeed or fail purely on the basis of your own sharpness of wit, you gotta be good to be at the game. </p><p>Whatever his morals, or lack thereof, Demara was smart, and not just at being an impostor. For example, while pretending to be a naval surgeon in the Royal Canadian Navy he actually managed to <i>be</i> a pretty competent naval surgeon:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>What Demara did possess was a strong intellect, plus a phenomenal
memory. Posing as [Dr Joseph] Cyr, he performed numerous minor surgeries, including
dental work on the infected tooth of CAYUGA’s commander, Captain James
Plomer. Demara apparently studied up on the necessary techniques by
reading text books and relying on the help of his Sick Berth Attendant,
plus generous supplies of anesthetic and antibiotics.</p><p>Following a commando-style raid off the west coast of Korea, three
seriously wounded casualties — all South Korean guerillas – were brought
aboard CAYUGA. Cyr aka Demara is said to have removed a bullet from a
man’s chest and amputated a foot. His patients not only survived, but
Cyr’s fellow officers were so impressed with his coolness that they
planned to put his name forward for a medal. Talk of such an award, and
the attention surrounding his Korean exploits, was probably Demara’s
undoing.</p><p>The Canadian Navy apparently discovered Demara was using a false
identity after the real Dr. Cyr’s mother spotted a news report in her
local paper. War correspondents had picked up the story of the CAYUGA
medic and broadcast it far and wide. <br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">Source: <a href="https://navalandmilitarymuseum.org/archives/articles/characters/ferdinand-waldo-demara/" target="_blank">The Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum web site</a>.<br /></p><p>You can fake a lot, but you can't fake that level of basic competence. </p><p>But fake impostors like Boris "not really my first name" Johnson don't have to keep it real, relying on contacts, wealth & more general social capital, rather than quickness of wit. When a fake impostor buys his way into power, what you can end up with is someone without the basic competence or work ethic to carry out the role he's blagged his way into. </p><p>It would be a stretch to imagine Boris Johnson rising to the occasion, as Ferdinand Demara did in the medical bay of <a href="http://www.jproc.ca/cayuga/" target="_blank">HMCS Cayuga</a>, when Johnson, even with the combined resources of the Prime Ministers' office, the Conservative Party and mostly compliant meda behind him, struggles to rise to the level of impersonating a guy who can successfully operate a mop:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVK634Fh6rXi8jtyBISUPthvjZLex8WcJuvog13IbTcsJrD_x76IYOVwHcCQTw_7LQRpy6m7LqhPdgo4AbQx_J3HC4irBxqkh4tcqfAxWd0W51bnelQrL9JWDXMTc8mLJxaDqRMdfcUx8/s956/mop.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="956" data-original-width="812" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVK634Fh6rXi8jtyBISUPthvjZLex8WcJuvog13IbTcsJrD_x76IYOVwHcCQTw_7LQRpy6m7LqhPdgo4AbQx_J3HC4irBxqkh4tcqfAxWd0W51bnelQrL9JWDXMTc8mLJxaDqRMdfcUx8/s320/mop.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/11/boris-johnson-tried-mopping-floor-floods-just-made-things-worse-11077415/">Mop top in mop flop.</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p>That's not to say that Demara was some kind of hero, a Robin Hood figure. He described his own motivation as being "Rascality, pure rascality." But most of us have a sneaking regard for the exploits of the cheeky rascal, hence the box office draw of Tony Curtis, or Leonardo de Caprio retelling the stories of real-life tricksters like Demara, or <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264464/" target="_blank">Frank Abagnale</a>. </p><p>But it still stings to see not-very bright establishment insiders fraudulently appropriating the persona of the clever rogue and visiting the fruits of their incompetence on the rest of us.<br /></p><p>tl;dr: inequality of opportunity tends inevitably towards kakistocracy. Grow your talent pools, people.</p><p>In 1961, in the UK, the talent pool was on the shallow side in other senses. After being recuruited into a wide range of responsible and challenging jobs in the war, the 1950s was somthing of a low point where either low-status work or low-status housewifery was seen as the default social position for half of the population. </p><p>The introduction of the birth control pill with its upside of greater reproductive autonomy (and downside of assumed sexual availability) was still the best part of a year away in early 1961. It wouldn't be until 1964 that a revision to the Married Women's Property Act gave married women the right keep half of any savings they'd made from the allowance paid to them by their husbands (bear in mind that, in many workplaces, it was still the norm for women to be forced give up work on marriage at this time). And, as for abortion this wasn't legalised until 1967 and, <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/dup-moves-to-tighten-northern-ireland-e2-80-99s-year-old-abortion-law/ar-BB1dIHoR" target="_blank">in Northern Ireland, abortion rights are still a high profile battleground in 2021</a>. </p><p>As in sexual politics, racial politics was also a story of systematic exclusion for a whole section of society. 1961 was the year when Mahesh Upadhyaya arrived from Aden (now south Yemen) to a UK where minority citizens looking for lodgings were still routinely greeted by signs reading "No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish." </p><p>There was nothing particularly remarkable about Mahesh when he arrived in the UK, but he would go on play his part in the history of his adopted nation in 1968, when he became the first person to bring a racial discrimination case under the newly-introduced Race Relations Act. Mahesh related the following story:<br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p>After I found a job with a regular salary I set about searching for a suitable home for my family. We found one on Penistone Road, at the edge of Huddersfield, close to my employer’s transport routes.<br /></p><p> I arranged an appointment and everyone, my parents, brother, my wife
and myself, went along. We found no problems at all with the house, a
spacious three-bedroom semi, and wanted to make an offer. So I rang the
developers, George Haigh & Sons, later that day.</p>
<p>The person on the phone said, “Are you the coloured family who had a look around earlier?”</p>
<p>I said that we were.</p>
<p>The person on the phone said, “Our policy is not to sell to coloured
people because that will jeopardise the sales of our other properties.”</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Sadly for Mahesh, he had to face hostiity at work for having the temerity to bring his case to court at all and the outcome of his case was to be dismissed on a technicality. But Mahesh remains proud of his decision to speak out, saying <a href="https://eachother.org.uk/racism-1960s-britain/" target="_blank">"I’m proud to have been a part of such an important milestone in the UK’s evolution towards being a fairer society."</a></p><p>For LGBTQ citizens it was a similar time of limbo, with equality still a distant dream, but with hints of the first stirrings of a move away from automatic prejudice and exclusion. At least it was for gay men, still suffering from the effects of Nineteenth legislation which their lesbian peers had been spared, thanks to Victorian prudery (<a href="https://venerablepuzzle.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/the-curious-case-of-the-queen-victoria-and-the-lesbians/" target="_blank">the prudery didn't come from Victoria herself, contary to popular belief</a>):<br /></p><p></p><blockquote>The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, better known as the Wolfenden Report, was published in 1957, three years after the committee first met in September 1954. It was commissioned in response to evidence that homosexuality could not legitimately be regarded as a disease and aimed to bring about change in the current law by making recommendations to the Government. Central to the report findings was that the state should focus on protecting the public, rather than scrutinising people’s private lives.<br /><br />It took 10 years for the Government to implement the Wolfenden Report’s recommendations in the Sexual Offences Act 1967. Backed by the Church of England and the House of Lords, the Sexual Offences Act partially legalised same-sex acts in the UK between men over the age of 21 conducted in private. Scotland and Northern Ireland followed suit over a decade later, in 1980 and 1981 respectively. The Sexual Offences Act represented a stepping stone towards equality, but there was still a long way to go.</blockquote><p> From <a href="https://www.bl.uk/lgbtq-histories/articles/a-short-history-of-lgbt-rights-in-the-uk" target="_blank"><i>A Short History of LGBT rights in the UK</i></a> by Steven Dryden.</p><p></p><p>Over the last sixty years, the general direction of travel in terms of equality in terms of gender, race and sexuality has been clear and encouraging. Which is a cause for modest celebration, rather than the noisy wailing coming from those noisy, <a href="https://bylinetimes.com/2020/11/20/behind-laurence-foxs-reclaim-party-the-latest-in-politainment/" target="_blank">well-connected</a> fake outsiders:<br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnX8CQPCtQdPAe8Q0yYnxhLkeFpvt5oz51pLmG_ziJCggtMqUpgRaR02h_KPufzV3bXrjrLqgVaeHKxIyLCv14G7kNgSp257ojjAoODdo4mbzYdMmx7UgLX2ZP1ptmaIlBr76W9Z_KdIo/s477/Fox.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="477" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnX8CQPCtQdPAe8Q0yYnxhLkeFpvt5oz51pLmG_ziJCggtMqUpgRaR02h_KPufzV3bXrjrLqgVaeHKxIyLCv14G7kNgSp257ojjAoODdo4mbzYdMmx7UgLX2ZP1ptmaIlBr76W9Z_KdIo/s320/Fox.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/10/24/privilege/" target="_blank">"When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p> I don't go for nostalgia in a big way. Sometimes the familiarity of the past can feel reassuring, but it's always worth remembering that there are bits that were bad, have got better and can continue to get better if we live in the present, not the past. </p><p>But, when it comes to pretenders, the modern ones really are rubbish and some of the old ones really were great...<br /></p>
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<p> </p><p> </p><p>*Update: Now I've seen it and cannot unsee it, it would be remiss of me not to add this clip of Boris Johnson disinfecting a chair, set to one Richard Attenborough's wildlife narrations, to that picture of him ineffectually moving a mop around:</p><p></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Can’t stop watching Boris Johnson being narrated by David Attenborough<a href="https://t.co/CcQr9U1WHr">pic.twitter.com/CcQr9U1WHr</a></p>— Gregory Bufithis 🇬🇷 🌊 (@GregBufithis) <a href="https://twitter.com/GregBufithis/status/1363193298266050568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 20, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <p><br /></p>Andrew Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14541926954531770980noreply@blogger.com0