Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, June 18, 2023
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47 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Nothing that hasn’t been said by others here and elsewhere, but these guys have the degrees to back up their skepticism:
Typical scientist, wanting actual evidence.
More at the link, but for now you can rest easy: “the material Grusch handed to Congress will be investigated by the powerful House of Representatives oversight committee, chaired by Republican congressman James Comer.”
Yah, he of “the dog ate my informant” fame. Knowing he is on the job and will get to the bottom of all this makes me feel better already. Don’t you?
I was walking home from the grocery store yesterday and I had a thought. I was lugging about 30 pounds of groceries by hand home. What if that happened everyday for every step?
It was only a bit over a quarter mile, but the effort tired me and I got very sweaty with a fairly light load.
I’ve never really had a problem with weight / BMI. I clock in at 160 – 170. Never varies much.
Life would be very much more difficult if I was sporting an additional 30 pounds just walking around.
On my way there I was easy / breezy listening to music and popping my fingers to the beat. On the way back I was dragging, sweating hard, breathing hard from the extra 30 pounds.
I’m a bit of an outlier. I’m way skinnier than most folks my age. Many people my age carry around a grocery run of weight on their bodies daily that I don’t – some, many two weeks worth or three weeks worth on top of what I haul around on a daily basis. That’s substantial. Most men my age do not weigh 165. I always was pretty scrawny.
I’m fairly fit – I walk four miles a day in an hour or so, every day 7 days a week. Do light weights daily.
Lugging home 30 pounds of groceries about a third of a mile tuckers me out and in summer I sweat profusely for the next hour.
Most men my age lug that extea poundage around every day on their hips and legs and belly. I’m pretty fit and that grocery run makes me sweat and blow hard once a week and that is their everyday experience.
I am acutely aware of what an extra 30 pounds does to my body, I experience it once a week.
Were it everyday it would just become new normal. Which disturbs me.
I know in my heart the difference between walking to and back from the grocery store and the what the extra weight means to mobility.
I’m glad I’m semi-skinny.
More science news:
To ferret out dark matter:
To “see” dark energy:
At the very least we will learn something, even if it’s not as definitive as these guys are hoping for.
The Curse of Recursion: Training on Generated Data Makes Models Forget
Basically, if AI generated articles and information are used to train future AI programs, the resulting programs are dumb.
Karma strikes again.
I was seeing some headlines about a survey where it seems more Americans find non-traditional relationships immoral. Here’s a thought, is this even a question that should be asked? I posted a couple of weeks ago about a female coworker involved in an at least mentally abusive relationship. It’s pretty bad. Do I then find traditional marriage overall to be immoral. Of course not. I don’t really know anything about the trans lifestyle, so much so that’s it’s not anything I’d even think about were it not for the non-stop trans headlines and R’s constantly railing against it. It’s the hate I find morally objectionable. Maybe the question should be, Do you find openly hating people and legislating against them because they’re not like you to be morally acceptable?
‘Western arrogance’: how the wellness movement co-opted an Amazon frog toxin with deadly effects
Reading that, my first thought, my last thought, and every thought in between amounted to little more than “Stupid is as stupid does.” But then the article led me to this piece in which I came across this pile of dung among the corn:
Really? The International Association of Kambo Practitioners? Riiiight…. Suuuuuurrre… I guess that is why she ended up dead.
As the first article noted:
To put it another way, “Don’t try this at home.”
@OzarkHillbilly: Not only are these aliens crashing all the time, but they manage to do so in places where no one carries a mobile phone with a camera! Also, for some reason a secret branch of the US military always reaches the crash site first, regardless of where in the world it happens. Either that or the aliens only crash on US territory. Or, perhaps, every country has an equally competent and secret group and collectively they have a 100% success rate of reaching the sites first.
@MarkedMan: What I wonder about is the aliens apparent disinterest in cities. I mean, that’s where the people are, isn’t it?
@Sleeping Dog: I saw this a couple days ago. Somebody commented that humans will still be essential.
@clarkontheweekend: My personal philosophy is MYOB. If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, I don’t care.
@Sleeping Dog:
I used to have to remind people who should now better that yesterday does not equal today daily.
One was addicted to weighted averages and daily uptake vs daily downloads. She was intense. A failed project. Millions spent and little to no benefit. A boutique project. Failed pretty hard. Millions spent to no benefit. It happens often.
I’ve worked on more than one of those types – the boutique project. A principle is flexing, has a budget, doesn’t know how easy and common it is to fail.
I always held that the process of data amalgamation and integration and all that entails outweighs the personal hubris. Getting 17 systems to work together is the benefit. Fuck the needed today dashboard I was responsible for, the common landing spot was the benefit.
Eminently usable for years. Getting every system to land at a common spot was the ultimate goal. My dashboard delivery was gravy on top, and frankly fairly easy once everything needed was in place.
My front end bullshit disguised how damn hard it was to get system to share a space with another and link up.
My delivery was determined by how well about 150 previous data capture and integration project steps went. I was hugely part and parcel to target database design, but for months prior all of my inputs were absent. They did not exist yet. We would fake probable data for testing.
The upside and downside of my purview was that I was the pointy end end of the spear. I presented data in a curated fashion per requirements plus extras I thought would be useful based on what they thought was important to track.
In a way I was kind of a boss. In order for us to deliver I need for the structure where all of the disparate data lands needs to look pretty close to this structure. I predicated the landing database structure.
Most of the months I spent on integration rather than presentation which what I was paid for. But, no integration equals crap presentation layer. Wasn’t gonna allow that.
I would prepare for months expecting a probable result, then go upstream to influence how the data integration proceeded.
At one instance I had 5 different versions of the same product basically ready to go simultaneously. All basically identical dashboards with markedly different input structures. I was prepared!
Most large corporations have majorly disjointed data systems that only co-exist at all because management requires that all data from all systems lands in one spot so it can be analyzed coherently easily.
Today in Twitter stupidity, Elon Musk and Joe Rogan are demanding actual physician Dr. Peter Hotez, who has helped developed a COVID vaccine that he did not patent and gives away to impoverished nations, “debate” crank anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. on Rogan’s podcast.
Dr. Hotez is, of course, refusing to engage with this nonsense. The purpose of this “debate” isn’t to convince anyone, it’s to leech legitimacy from an actual scientist and elevate the lies and misinformation of the bullshitter RFK Jr. to the same level as those of the actual scientist. And, of course, to make big bucks for Rogan, a factor that shouldn’t be forgotten.
Reading through the replies to Dr. Hotez has utterly destroyed my faith in humanity, although a big part of that could just be Musk’s idiotic promotion of the replies of blue-checkmarked imbeciles to the top of the chain so all the reasonable voices are buried. Still, that so many people are such utter fools is not at all reassuring about the future of the human race.
‘They enjoyed this’: Ukrainian woman recounts five-month nightmare of torture and imprisonment
I won’t quote it, all of it should be read. It’s a bare bones recounting that leaves a lot to the imagination. I’m pretty sure the FSB has a lot more imagination than I.
@Mikey: I saw a bumper sticker yesterday:
Get Factsinated
Stupidity cubed.
@OzarkHillbilly: Exactly! Who would have thunk that aliens travel light years to look at, what, prairie dogs? Mountain goats?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh Eris, the aliens are Space Republicans!!!
@Mikey: Maybe Dr. Hotez should accept, but stipulate that the debate have nothing to do with Musk and Rogan, and be moderated by an independent group with no financial interest. They would set the rules of what could be introduced into the debate (e.g. no I read it on the internet). As soon as Musk and Rogan would have nothing to gain financially they would disappear.
I took a bit of a hit yesterday. I found out my woodcutting neighbor (4.5 miles away) Larry suddenly died back in January. Normally I get my wood from him in Feb. and March and I always gave him more than he was asking because I knew how hard he worked. Money was a little tighter this year and I waited till yesterday to talk to him. His GF said he died of an aneurysm. I’m pretty sure the real cause of death was lack of insurance. He was a really sweet guy who had lived a very hard life full of trials and tribulations, but he had a ready smile for everyone. How sweet was he?
Every April he would stop by our house and give me a gallon bag of morels for which I tried to repay him with a few 6 and 7 pound roasting chickens come October.
I should have known something was wrong when he didn’t come by with the morels this past April. RIP Larry. I’m glad I got to know you.
@OzarkHillbilly:
@MarkedMan:
Obviously their insurance does not cover third party damages. Seeing as they know they will crash, at least they can be spared a huge bill and many lawsuits for damaging expensive public and private property.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I did a little research. I think get factsinated is legit.
This is interesting for the film addicts here.
The article doesn’t mention that Touch of Evil received similar treatment to The Magnificent Ambersons.
After the studio re-edited Touch of Evil, Welles sent them a 58 page memo explaining his intent. That memo served as a guide almost 40 years later when a version as close to Welles’s vision was re-edited and released in 1998. It’s one of my favorite films. The opening sequence alone is worth twice the price of admission.
Here’s hoping the restoration of The Magnificent Ambersons enjoys something close to the same success. Short of locating a lost original cut, this is as close as we will get to seeing Welles’s original vision.
@clarkontheweekend:
An excellent idea, because that is the crux. Not, ‘do you approve of so and so,’ but ‘do you wish to to use the power of government to control or outlaw the actions of so and so.’ The number of people I don’t approve of is. . . quickly checking world population figures. . .approximately 7.8 billion people. The number of people I want to regulate is significantly smaller.
@clarkontheweekend:
Well, surveys are going to ask all kinds of questions. I’m trying to pay less attention to these kinds of things (but failing, see yesterday’s post about the survey showing Republicans becoming somehow even worse people). The only thing I can control is how I react to things, and I have absolutely no problem at all with what consenting adults do as long as it is legal.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m assuming you include yourself in that 7.8 billion figure.
@Kurtz:
It seems that way to me, too. And it’s far too clever for the rabid anti-vaxxers to have come up with.
@Kurtz:
No one is more deserving of my irritation than me.
@Michael Reynolds:
I know how you feel.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Any civilization capable of traveling between star systems is going to be on a different plane of existence. Thinking of a pilot as flying expertly a ship from point A to point B probably is not accurate. They could, for example, be moving as a collective–one million ships could have entered the solar system and gone undetected aside from a few statistical outliers, none of which matter. Or this civilization could be figuring out this type of travel, and their FTL Industrial Complex has some bugs in the system.
@Kurtz: Thanx.
@MarkedMan:
An unfinished* ebook of mine starts with an alien spaceship crashing (after they had collided with a meteor, Earth was the closest place for them to put down
) outside Wichita Kansas**. A local policeman and a television news crew were close by and arrive on scene within ten minutes.
The aliens are harmless. Just research scientists. Before leaving earth they give mankind several new technology. One of which later backfires due to human meddling and that’s what the ebook will be about. ‘Mishap’
*- I have at least a dozen unfinished ebooks saved to one drive. Not to mention just as many story ideas floating around in my head. Mishap is about 80% done. If I drop one of its subplots, it would be 95% Complete at least.
**- For some reason I have had 3 stories open in Kansas. Wichita, Fort Riley, Prairie Dunes GC in Hutchinson. Plus I wrote an espionage story with a scene in Fort Scott.
@Modulo Myself:
Maybe the private equity firm back home is trying to reduce costs by giving them a lousy atmospheric flight control system. Since they won’t find out what a bad idea that was for centuries, they haven’t rectified the matter in some other misguided fashion.
Or maybe they’re still perfecting their self-driving technology.
@Mikey: These people drawn energy from the narrative that the establishment is afraid to debate them. Silence is affirmation.
Our great institutions were built by confronting the forces of ignorance and superstition. They can only be maintained by similar effort. I would admit you would need a person trained beyond the simple subject matter expertise they are discussing. They would need to understand the techniques of persuasion and the counters….but there is no way around the RW. Only through them.
Newsome is showing real leadership here. He is saying…To quote the great Bernie Mac,” I ain’t scarred of you muth@fukk@$”
Elemental, Pixar’s latest, has flopped. I know why. Twice I’ve written books (a duology and a trilogy) where I fell in love with the concept and forgot that readers might come for the idea, but will stay for the characters. Elemental is a movie about a girl who’s a flame and a boy who is water. Because millions of little girls and boys dream of someday growing up to be abstract concepts. Dumb.
Mermaids, street urchins who find magic lanterns, toys who come alive, monsters who aren’t really scary, these are all innately interesting to a young audience. A flame? Nah. Much as it seems that parasitic microfauna (BZRK) and a creepy, sadistic grim reaper (Messenger of Fear) are not all that fascinating to teenage readers.
@OzarkHillbilly: If aliens have a worry about contaminating cultures, they would try to aim their crashing ships at places with no culture.
They then call the alien AAA to come fetch them, which is why we see so little evidence later.
If aliens wanted to come here and probe people’s butts, I think they would do better selling sex toys than abducting people.
Or perhaps just creating low cost colonoscopy clinics. If they have too many eyes or something and can’t pass for human, sell the scopes.
@MarkedMan: But clearly, none of these agencies has a 100% success rate, or we’d never even know these crashes happen. Someone not from the agencies is getting there first some of the time–just not a person who can provide other than eyewitness accounts.
@OzarkHillbilly: My condolences to you and his loved ones. While lack of insurance was certainly an ancillary factor, aneurisms are easy to overlook.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Ages ago, I read an article about women who claimed to have been kidnapped by space aliens. What struck me about them was that they all had names like Skye and Amber and Caresse. Not one was named Jen or Kathy or Susan or Jane or Mary.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think you’re going to be disappointed at the number and diversity of the cohort that will answer “yes.”
@Gustopher:
Funny that you mention AAA and aliens. In Mishap, the police officer and the Alien space ship captain are going over the damage to the ship-
“The assistant pressed something on his gadget, and a roll of what looked like old-fashioned adding machine tape started coming out the side of it. The assistant waited for a few seconds, then tore it off and handed it to his boss, who in turn handed it to Bob. It felt like thin plastic, and Bob was surprised again at how ordinary everything seemed. He wouldn’t have been terribly astonished if the guy had pulled out his AAA membership card and asked him to call a tow truck.”
@Kurtz: Using the term itself to search, Bing led me to believe that the focus is on the relationship between having cancer and being vulnerable to Covid-19. Seems like a valuable line of study to pursue.
@Bill Jempty: Your ebook sounds a bit like Super 8 without the thriller subplot.
@CSK: Once, I took a class in psychology from a professor who felt the giveaway in alien lifeforms/past life progressions and other such phenom was that the details always conform to conventional wisdom. No aliens have unpronounceable names, they never look non-anthropomorphic, no one ever has the past life of a rural living in a place he doesn’t know the name of (or has a name that’s not part of historic record).
Today in fascinating Twitter threads: a gay man posted a lament about how trans people and drag queens have become the faces of the LGBTQ movement. He posted a photo of three celebrities, lamenting that we don’t still have “normal“ gay celebrities like them today. He posted a photo of a semi-naked performer at a party with children, decrying all the trans and drag “groomers.” And finally, he complained about a drag queen being the face of North Face’s advertising for Pride month, instead of the many “normal” gay and lesbian athletes that they could’ve chosen instead.
As expected, he was thoroughly ratioed for all three complaints, as follows:
1. The three “normal” gay celebrities he shared photos of were Elton John, Neil Patrick Harris, and Matt Bomer. People responded by sharing numerous photos of each of the three men in drag, and pointing out that dressing flamboyantly in drag is one of the things Elton John is known for.
2. People shared the original version of the semi-naked performer, along with the text that accompanied it. It turns out that the performer wasn’t a drag queen or trans person at all, but a female stripper. The parents had invited her to the party because they wanted to encourage their young daughters to feel pride instead of shame about their bodies. Whether that’s the best way to go about it is debatable, but what’s not debatable is that this wasn’t a drag performance.
3. The drag queen highlighted in North Face’s advertising for Pride month is a 6 foot 10 alpine skier and hiker that goes by the Instagram influencer name of Pattie Gonia. He dresses in drag for many of his excursions in order to encourage people from marginalized communities to realize that the outdoors is for them as well. Those who shared this commended North Face for an outstanding choice. (One tweet: “I bet Patagonia is jealous they didn’t think of it first!”)
link
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Indeed. Which is why for Animorphs we came up with a blue-furred, deer-like creature with a scorpion-style tail, extra eyes on stalks and no mouth. Because I’m pretty sure aliens will not be Michael Dorn with a nose prosthesis.
OTOH, as a goof we invented the Skrit-Na. The Skrit are basically big cockroaches, which metamorphose into what amounts to a separate species, the Na, who are your classic Close Encounters grays. They are known throughout the galaxy for their weird fetish of performing meaningless medical experiments on species they encounter. No other alien race understands WTF the Skrit-Na think they’re doing.
Ok, this strikes me as wrong on so many levels… but technology (and management) keep moving forward:
Nope, I’ve got nuthin. Or, as a professor of mine used to say at the end of his lecture, “Questions, comments, observations?”
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/14/radio-station-gets-part-time-ai-dj-based-on-its-midday-host/?utm_campaign=mb&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=morning_brew
@Gustopher:
Best place to put implant the trackers. Nobody covers it with tin foil.
@Modulo Myself: Achieving FTL travel was easy. It’s the slowing down and stopping part they’re having trouble with…
We have conquered FTL travel, time, and gravity. We are several levels beyond what you think of as “technology.”
And we are here because we want to give invasive butt exams.
A movie I really liked was Scarlett Johansson as an alien visitor who basically consumed horny men she brought home from clubs.
Dang it, can’t think of the name. Under The Skin, thank you Google.
Definitely worth a watch. It’s slow and heavy into cinematography. A gussied up art film about a sexy alien who lures horny men home to be consumed for reasons unexplained. It’s been six years since I last watched it so the details are fuzzy.
A damn good movie! The creepiness mostly resides in her blank demeanor and mien. ScarJo kicks butt in acting utterly blank and unreadable.