Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, August 27, 2024
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55 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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It’s totally normal to carry a severed whale’s head home with the kids.
Bonoism of the day:
The stars are bright but do they know
The universe is beautiful but cold
NeverWalz.com
Fckin’ amateurs.
eta the story behind the stupid
Abuse of migrants rampant at Louisiana Ice centers, report finds
What the hey? It’s not like they are actual human beings. Right?
Libtard.
eta: Lest one think this is just a Louisiana thing: More than 60 Ice detainees on hunger strike over ‘inhumane’ living conditions
HEY! I just now realized I have an Edit Function!!! Thanx Matt!
Trump campaign running ads in West Palm Beach just to make TFG feel better about himself.
https://youtu.be/2GkQjOyrziA?si=-bNADhgC3OV8XnCx
I’ve just started a book, “The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself”, by Robin Reames, and its subject has really got me thinking. It’s about Rhetoric, now a seldom discussed science but once an essential part of a classical education. The author makes the case that it became a science largly in response to the end of Athenian democracy, which had lasted for 200 years, but then came crashing down into a vicious and bloody dictatorship by committee (the Thirty Tyrants), because of a series of ruinous and ill-advised military adventures that left Athens all but defenseless. How did these come about? Per the author, it was due to the non-Athenian Sophists (from whence “sophistry”) who used the art of persuasion to convince the Athenian government to pursue them. In reality, these were disastrous for Athens but beneficial to the Sophists’ home states. Any citizen could speak in the Senate and call for any action and vote to see it implemented (think “open primary”) and the Sophists acted as tutors to some of the most influential citizens, whispering poison in their ears while teaching them how to rally the other citizens to their cause, and blind them to its flaws. The book is recent, and the author parallels this all with the Trump era, and her own relationship with her fundamentalist family.
The part that really has me thinking, though, is that one of the things that kept Athens from pulling out of this spiral: the fact that they literally had a different concept of “truth” than most of us here. Per the author, our version of truth came about in conjunction with the written language, and resulted in arguments that could be looked at again in the cold light of day and without emotion. However, the traditionalists believed truth was a feeling and could only be arrived at by speech, and would be recognized by the upwelling of emotion and fervor that it engendered. They explicitly distrusted the written argument, and felt it was sterile.
Bringing this to the Trump era, she makes the case that when a trumper says, “I know he lies, but he’s speaking the truth”, it isn’t a contradiction. The truth they are motivated by isn’t a truth of facts, but one of feeling, one that goes back to our most ancient societies.
@MarkedMan: Interesting. I’ve said that for conservatives, true means true to the faith, which is along the same line.
I think it was Bertrand Russell who talked about some Greek thinking being confused by written language being a relatively new thing they hadn’t quite gotten used to. Rules of grammar were confused with rules of the world. Crude example being difficulty with vacuum. You say vacuum is the absence of anything. But vacuum is a noun, a noun is a thing. It can’t be nothing.
@gVOR10: I don’t “get” this ancient idea of truth, but I find a couple of edge things in me that might approach it. First, I know when I get angry, I also feel that I am right even if later on I realize I was dead wrong. In this sense, I am confusing the feeling of “right” with actually being right. The second is sports. When I have a team, I “know” who that team is at a visceral level. No amount of logic or persuasion can change that. While I know that many hold their political tribe in the same space as their sports one, for me, the idea of being loyal to a political party makes as much sense as being loyal to a brand of detergent, or to a dentist. You have a job that needs doing, and you have certain choices, and you make the best one based on that. If I lived in a solidly Republican town I would be a registered Republican. Since I live in a Democratic town I’m registered as a Democrat. But that’s purely tactical.
[I have the edit! Thanks, Matt!]
How do you spell delusional? From Are Trump’s campaign rallies energizing his base – or sowing doubt? comes this little tidbit:
-Frank Scavo, a businessman and ardent Trump supporter
Right, a “good communicator”, he’s got “the issues, common sense issues”.
A delusional cherry on top of that sundae:
Are there 2 GOPs in Pennsylvania? Nuts all around.
https://x.com/AVindman/status/1827704034783879439
The above references a tweet thread but I can not seem to link it, this site (OTB) keeps giving me “critical errors” when I try. It will show up if you click the above link.
@MarkedMan:
A good case can be made that certainty is an emotion. That is, some things feel true or right, regardless of the facts.
I’ve long maintained people are swayed by narrative more than by facts. Take Einstein. He’s indisputably one of the brightest physicists ever, yet he had trouble accepting many of the aspects of quantum mechanics*, probably because they felt wrong to him. He referred to entanglement as “spooky action at a distance,” and responded to the uncertainty principle by claiming “God does not play dice with the universe.”
He wasn’t in denial, though. he was a scientist, after all, and accepted the experimental results were correct. But he died believing there were hidden variables involved in quantum systems, which would clear the matter up. None have been found, and probably none exist.
Or take trickle down economics. It’s not just Republiqans who believe it, a lot of other people do as well. We’ve seen over the past 40+ years what “supply-side” economics really does, and now what a little bit of the contrary does as well, and lots of people still believe cutting taxes spurs investment and creates new and better jobs. The narrative feels that right, even if it’s entirely wrong.
*In one of life’s little ironies, Einstein got a Nobel Prize for proving the quantum aspect of quantum mechanics, with his explanation of the photoelectric effect.
https://x.com/stealthygeek/status/1827901953558409629
“MSN”
…
https://nitter.poast.org/Gerashchenko_en/status/1828119557057237455#m
@Kingdaddy:
There’s an anecdote that one of Darwin’s children asked his playmates where their fathers kept their barnacles. This was at a time that Darwin grew very interested in barnacles, and had specimens in the house. the child quite normally assumed studying barnacles was something fathers did.
It’s unusual, but not weird, to take an opportunity to obtain a rare animal specimen one wishes to examine, for whatever reason. It is weird not to take measures to preserve it nor to transport it safely, not to mention there might have been public health and other issues involved as well. And who knows what happened when he got that thing in the house, or even the garage.
@gVOR10: I disagree; absence of substance is as much a thing phenomenologically as substance. Vacuum is very much a thing. That it is immaterial is immaterial. 😉
ETA: Looking at your post again, I realize that I should have opened with “I agree.”
Sure, Trump’s trying to find some excuse to slink away from the debate with Harris because Trump is a sad baby boy, but it is a chef’s kiss of wild stupidity to watch a grown human use the word Slopadopolus in a sentence.
@Kingdaddy: RFK Jr is the wacky neighbor in a sitcom.
@OzarkHillbilly:
~Luzerne County, PA Republican businessman
If The Guardian quoted me, an American, saying, “conflict resolution isn’t my specialty”, would they write it, “conflict resolution isn’t my speciality?”
@Kingdaddy: I love the name, “anti-PsychoPAC”!
@Eusebio: Yes, probably. Publications use language and style of their primary audience/country of origin, even in quotes.
@Eusebio:
If you said “who should I ask,” you’d be quoted thus, “Of whom ought I to inquire.” 🙂
@Gavin: TFG heard of rope-a-dope so brands Stephanopoulos as a Slopadopolus, not knowing that it was a good tactic of Ali in the ring. Then again maybe he wanted to call him a Snuffleupagus and messed it up.
@charontwo: Telegram has been very useful for getting a close look at what is going on in Ukraine. Especially lately as the right wing pro-war Russian telegrammers are fairly angry at military leadership.
@Jen: I don’t doubt that’s correct, but it seems a bit odd to replace a 3 syllable word with a 5 syllable word in a quotation.
@MarkedMan:
@Kathy:
I recently read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. He talks of the mind having System 1, intutive, largely involuntary thinking, and System 2 which is mindful and can do logic and arithmetic. He talks a lot about that when System 1 produces an opinion that feels right, it really, really feels right. System 2 may, or may not, be employed to rationally test it and fact check it.
This seems consistent with George Lakoff’s statement that conservatives are well able to think through complex causation, but they default to simple morality. I put the Reames book on my Wish List. It sounds consistent with System 1 and 2. As does religious revelation.
Philosophy is far from my line of territory, but I recall commentary that Descartes started off great with, “I think, therefore I am.”, but that he went quickly downhill from there. Supposedly he ended up saying God wouldn’t give him false beliefs so the stuff he intuitively believed, including the existence of God, must be true.
@gVOR10:
I recall reading Descartes Discourse on the Method in either high school or college philosophy class. I don’t recall much about it, but I distinctly remember being unimpressed.
As a philosopher, Descartes was a good mathematician. He did a lot in the service of analytic geometry.
I should get to Kahneman’s book, too. I’ve read some about his work with Tversky in Michael Lewis’ The Undoing Project. It would be good to go over it again in more depth, and without the endless details on their personal lives that Lewis sprinkled in his book.
BTW:
Descartes is having dinner one night. The waiter asks, “Would monsieur care for some dessert.”
Descartes says “I think not.” Whereupon he vanishes.
@charontwo:
I hope this case is because Telegram was actively participating in these crimes and not just some “selling a product without intentionally fraudulent cybersecurity is now a crime” thing, because that would be a dangerous precedent
@Kathy: One thing I absolutely know is only an emotion: the Eureka Moment, the moment at which everything clicks into place and you know that your mystery has been solved once and for all. I’ve experienced this emotion a few times in my long career during lengthy and high pressure debug sessions, maybe a half dozen times total. And it turned out to be correct about half the time. If the Universe is going to REVEAL ITSELF!!!! to me in a cosmic and profound way (which is what it feels like), it’s going to have to do better than 50/50.
@Eusebio: Okay, now I’m confused…I thought what you were flagging was the spelling (demoralised vs. demoralized).
@Stormy Dragon:
WaPo has a story:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/08/26/pavel-durov-telegram-france-detention/
snip …
One of the big issues here is skimping/cost saving on moderation – something Musk is notorious for.
@Kathy: Love the joke. Recommend the book, but with a caveat. My guess is he made some money consulting on corporate decision making, and wanted to make some more. He has a lot of pages on that, and on economic behavior, and of his five sections, I ended up skimming a lot of III and IV. To be fair, he had some good material on interviewing candidates, but I’m retired, I don’t do that anymore.
@Eusebio: [ETA: via @Jen]: “Specialty” and “speciality” are considered two alternate spellings of the same word (h/t Merriam Webster online). To the extent that such is the case, the 3 and 5 syllable pronunciations are, then, alternate pronunciations of the same word. As such, if a Londoner were to say “it is my speciality” (which the spell checker is marking as a misspelling, btw), FTFNYT is likely to quote that as “it is my specialty.” For the case you are suggesting, the sample is not always considered two unique words even though there may be conditions where “specialty” and “speciality” are in fact two different words (though I can’t think of any offhand).
At least 4 pieces on Telegram at the NYT:
Here is one (gift linky):
“NYT”
snip …
@MarkedMan:
I’ve learned to distrust that feeling. When I experience it, I ask myself: “Really? That easy/simple/obvious?” Unless, of course, it’s very obvious.
A lot of the time I’m wrong. And often it’s not even a good idea. Most times it’s really clever, and that might be what makes it feel so right.
@gVOR10:
I must have told that joke here numerous times.
Lewis’ book has a lot of details on the lives of Kahneman and Tversky, but more of their earlier times. Later the focus is on Tversky, who died young. I don’t recall mention of any corporate consulting. But 1) I don’t recall all those aspects of the book, and 2) Kahneman was an academic with a practical application for his work; it would likely have led to doing work on the side. Both did work and research for Israel’s military, for instance.
I’ll probably get the audio book, if there is one. Those are harder to skip, especially while driving. I end up not paying attention, and my mind starts to wander.
@Jen: I was taking it a step further, replacing specialty with the Brit version speciality, since the additional “i” adds two syllables to the word.
Just nutha ignint cracker: Thanks, hadn’t refreshed to see your post before replying.
On to bad news, I had scheduled my remaining vacation time for the first two weeks of September. Now, chances are a major customer will publish their request for proposals next week, maybe as early as Sept. 2nd. Meaning I can’t leave. It’s not so much the work I’ll do on the proposal, but the work before it. Namely, arranging the info the bosses need to set prices for next year.
So, I’m rescheduling for the last two weeks of September.
It’s not just the time off to rest, though that matters. Having finished a story, I wanted to dedicate two weeks to do another one. That won’t happen if I can’t take the time off. With the 10+ workday, I’m too tired to write when I get home.
IIRC we had some snark a week or so ago about Ben Sasse, “good Republican” who resigned from the presidency Of the University of Florida, having spent way more money than his predecessor, mostly on “consultants”. I see today he stays on full salary through 2028. WIKI says he held the position from Feb 2023 through Jul 2024. So he gets six years salary ($1.04 million per year) for about eighteen months work. Nice work if you can get it.
Well, guess which Orange Weirdo Felon got indicted today.
It’s amazing how such Good news can make one feel better sometimes…
It’s not a new indictment, in the sense that it supersedes the earlier election subversion indictment. This one takes into account the obstacles the Leo & Crow Court put in place to protect the Felon.
TL;DR: Lock him up.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: An unrelated British usage question. The Guardian had a story about abuse at an “Ice facility”. I spent a moment pondering ice making plant? Rink? What’s an ice facility? Before I realized it’s ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. OK, it’s usually spoken as “ice”, not I C E, but it’s usually rendered “ICE”. Is it British practice to not capitalize all of an acronym, or is it a Guardian style book thing?
Superceding indictment:
“CNN”
snip …
@charontwo:
Moderation seems a weird word to use in relationship to Telegram.
Consider two extremes:
On one end we have social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, etc.) They store large amounts of persistent data for mass public consumption, and more importantly recommend chunks of that data to people without being asked.
Moderation makes sense in this context.
At the other end we have something like AT&T wireless, that deals with person to person texts and calls, does not store copies of those communications, and does not independently make those communications available to other (i.e., at&t never spontaneously calls me and plays a recording of a random phone call between two strangers).
In this context, moderation does not make sense. We don’t expect at&t to actively listen in on phone calls and disconnect them if something illegal is being discussed, and it would be weird to suggest they’re criminally liable for failing to do so.
Now it’s possible Telegram is, behind the scenes, operating more like Facebook or Twitter, but at least from the user perspective they seem more like AT&T wireless.
I can’t go in and see everything a Telegram user has said to anyone ever, only things they’ve said to me
So, just out of curiousity, I looked demoralized up in the dictionary. According to the Oxford dictionary, demoralized is 4 syllables.
Pbththtthththththth… 😉
@Kathy: Have to disagree:
(1) Obviously, there are potential health risks in dealing with large dead animals.
(2) If you find a dead whale, you should notify the local stranding network, so that…
a. They can determine how the animal died. That’s important information for conservationists.
b. They can work with other local authorities to dispose of the corpse safely and properly.
@gVOR10: I didn’t look up Ozark’s link, so I assumed that it was a typo by person/s unidentified. I know a lot about grammar and usage trivia, but how acronyms are done in the UK is too arcane even for me.
ETA: I had the same question (and wondered whether Louisiana would need multiple ice-making facilities and what undocumenteds would do at them) before I realized it was ICE. Then I stopped thinking about the question altogether.
@OzarkHillbilly: Maybe for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
@Kingdaddy: For some reason, I always assume that people like RFK, Jr. spend only small amounts of time considering what they should do and more time rationalizing how what they want to do can become the best choice.
@Kingdaddy:
I didn’t claim it was right, only that it wasn’t weird to try to get such a specimen.
What’s weird is not taking care to pack it in ice to preserve it, get a vehicle or trailer to transport it safely, and not to take it somewhere that’s not set up for whatever examination you intend to carry out.
Imagine sticking it to the roof of a car, and allowing it to decompose over who knows how many hours of highway driving.
Not to mention the business with the dead bruin.
@Stormy Dragon:
FWIW, I don’t think that’s correct. I believe you can follow people on Telegram, and there appear to be very, very large groups following, for instance, Russian military accounts. I don’t know if they promote content based on your interests or for payment, like Facebook. But they are making money some how.
@Kingdaddy:
Someone hasn’t seen the infamous Oregon Highway Division exploding whale video =3
@MarkedMan:
Even then it’s functionally more like a group sms chat than a Facebook group, although I agree at a certain size the nature of a group sms chat changes and a discussion needs to be had where that line is (maybe the Discord 10 person limit?)
@MarkedMan:
Here’s the Wikipedia entry on telegram groups and channels.
It seems more like a closed, smaller-scale social media app than a simple messaging one. So, you can’t browse Telegram, but you can search it. You can also be invited to join a group like “MAGA Terrorists for the Weirdo Felon,” or “Mad Vlad’s Maniacs,” just as an example.
I installed it in a phone around 2014, on the advice of a coworker. He claimed it was 100% end-to-end encrypted. I mostly used it to message him. One thing, though, when someone in my phone’s contacts list installed the app on their phone, I got a notification that “so-and-so has joined Telegram! Message them today!” I didn’t bother to install it in subsequent phones.
Various news pieces on the arrest, say that the group/channel chats are not encrypted by default. If so, then Telegram can see posts in those groups. If they get a request from law enforcement and don’t want to give up any data, that would be of concern. Especially if actual terrorist groups, pedophiles, drug dealers, etc. are using the app to communicate and coordinate.
Recent new reports also question how secure the app’s encryption is. No clue on that one, and the news offer no details. But if Telegram makes money by mining data, then the encryption doesn’t really matter. Of curse, I’ve no idea how they make money.
There’s a lot I can’t comprehend about the Weirdo Felon, but I have his understanding of the law down pat. Now he’s claiming his latest indictment should be thrown out, because of the Leo & Crow Court execrable ruling on immunity.
Law is not an easy subject. There are multiple complications, a specialized language, and above all there’s a great deal of nuance and interpretations. This means there are loopholes, even if the law is perfectly clear. This is why we have people who specialize in the application of the law: lawyers and judges.
The Orange Weirdo thinks the law says and means what he believes it to say and mean.
We’ve seen this multiple times. Claims that Article II of the constitution, which deals with the executive power, lets him do whatever he wants (you scarcely need a whole article to state “the occupant of the White House can do whatever he wants”). The claim that any paper that passes through his desk can be declared a personal record, which is not what the presidential records law says. I don’t recall the law involved in conflicts of interest in the federal government, but I recall the law omits listing the president. Ergo The Weirdo has claimed the president can’t have a conflict of interest.
And last the claim the court has granted him absolute immunity. Horrible as that opinion was, it does not state that.
Contrast his claims not just by a rational reading of the law by a reasonable person, but by what lawyers and legal scholars say about these laws. The Orange Weirdo has an absolutist dictator’s understanding of it.
This weeks used DVD score:
Fargo $4
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life 50¢
Someday, RFK Jr is going to be claiming that the dead human body in his basement was just a body he found in a forest. And I think there will be reasonable doubt that he did that and didn’t kill a hiker.
What did he do with the whale head? We know what he did with the bear, so I’m expecting something big and exciting.
ETA: How does Fox report on this?
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rfk-jr-targeted-environmental-group-after-dead-whale-head-story-resurfaces
Seems reasonable to approach it this way, when they know that within two weeks they may have to defend Trump deciding to shake up the race by announcing part of his cabinet.
RFK Jr for HHS, obviously. I’m betting on Ye for HUD, maybe Hershel Walker.
Still haven’t found where the head went.
ETA wowsers Penny, an edit button! Thanks Matt!!!
@Stormy Dragon:
Well, no, but that was more in the nature of a scientific experiment attempting to determine whether this was an optimal way to rid oneself of both a dead whale carcass and excess high explosives simultaneously. Alas, it was ineffective.