Obsidian Wings

A new year open thread

by liberal japonicus

A bit of Japanese culture for y'all. As you approach the end of the year, when you realize that you will only meet them in January rather than in the days remaining in December, you say 'Yoi otoshi wo [omukae* kudasai]' which roughly translates as 'have a good new year'. And when you meet them after Jan 1st, you say '[Shinnen] Akemashite omedeto gozaimasu', which is 'opening of the new year, congratulations'.

The thing that gets me is that you are only supposed to say those things one time, so you've got to remember who you said it to. Obviously, in these masked, online times, that's totally screwed up for me.

Japan also has a tradition of bonnenkai (literally 'forget the year party') and shinnenkai. Ironically, my year in Korea added a third year of these gatherings missed by me.

Anyway, a thread to describe what you do for new year.

[*ed: thanks for the correction in the comments]

A covid open thread

by liberal japonicus

As we head into the new year, my feed is filled with the coming omicron wave. Here in Japan, there is trepidation, but there is also a sense of wtf, brought on by things like this:

https://fortune.com/2021/12/07/japan-world-oldest-country-covid-19-death-daily/

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/22/1067024865/japans-puzzling-covid-lull

https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/japan-omicron-covid-19-cases-numbers-20211222.html

All pretty baffling. While my Japanese is ok, engaging in the back and forth of Japanese in facebook, not to mention twitter, is just too much, I really need a target that isn't moving, so most of my back and forth is with other foreigners in English, which breaks into some interesting sets of opinions.

One pole likes to argue that Japan, as both a country and a government, is doing a wonderful job of things and people who complain can't admit it.

The other pole like to argue that Japan's government has screwed the pooch, but it is the Japanese people who have saved the government from themselves, with the participation of any number of possible X factors.

Now, there have been (and probably still are) anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers here in Japan, but they have been pretty much a tiny minority that has not gotten any traction. Or maybe a larger majority that isn't going to make themselves known (While I'm not a huge fan of Japanese conformity, this is a pleasant by-product of that).

Unfortunately, this all has opened a deep well of xenophobia that, being Japan, never really disappears. The article is behind a paywall, but if you save it as an html file and then drop it on your browser, you can read it, but it basically lists the things that are happening, some of which seem to have a tenuous relation with COVID, but fit into the overall current feelings.

There are other theories floating around and this WaPo article mentions a bunch of them (same trick as the Japan Time article if you want to read it)

On the spectrum of opinions, I lean toward the latter, with the X factor being a combination of things, but I think some cultural behavior has got to be factored in. Looking from outside of Asia, one might feel that the culture of Japan and South Korea are close enough to be considered the same, but I found them rather different. However, not as different as between the West and Japan. But it would probably do my theory a lot better if there were similar outcomes in Korea, which there are not.

Anyway, a subject that I haven't seen much in the comments of late. Sorry it ain't too cheerful, but I'm at a loss to think of anything that is so.

Mid-week energy thread

by liberal japonicus

Just a random topic that seems interesting

https://interestingengineering.com/energy-storage-trains-work-power-gravity

That or anything else.

A different look at the anti-vax movement

by liberal japonicus

This twitter thread, via Paul Campos at LGM is especially interesting to me because I have a student doing a graduation thesis comparing Spiderman and Spiderman: India and one of the things that has come up is caste. Unfortunately, there is no regular link and I am not sure how to embed a twitter thread in here, so you will have to go thru to Campos' blog post. Furthermore, I don't know what the original author, Ethan Grey knows about caste so I'm not sure how deep the metaphor goes.

I find it really interesting because the take I had on the caste system was that it was something very old in Indian society. Here is a jstor article (unfortunately behind a paywall, but the first page can be read) that goes off that.

However, a more recent take is given here

Anthropologist Susan Bayly writes that "until well into the colonial period, much of the subcontinent was still populated by people for whom the formal distinctions of caste were of only limited importance, even in parts of the so-called Hindu heartland… The institutions and beliefs which are now often described as the elements of traditional caste were only just taking shape as recently as the early 18th Century".

In fact, it is doubtful that caste had much significance or virulence in society before the British made it India's defining social feature.

Much of this discussion with the student has been focussed externally, and though I would have liked him to discuss some of the parallels with the Japanese Burakumin, he's gotten interested in Mencius' Theory of Goodness and the villains in the two stories. However. that doesn't stop me (nor should it stop you!) from thinking about it and how these categories might arise from modernization.

Japan’s Modernization and Discrimination: What are Buraku and Burakumin?

But returning to considering our anti-vaxxers as being motivated by caste, I wonder what it says for the theory if caste is really a more modern phenomenon, which would mean that anti-vax sentiment is also a modern sentiment rather than something springing from older roots. Discuss that, or, as always, discuss something else!

You Gotta Fight For Your Right (To Party!): The Boris Johnson version open thread

by liberal japonicus

Alternative title; The War of Jenkin's Ear revisited

The ostensible casus belli began with the maiming of Jenkins following the boarding of his vessel by Spanish coast guards in 1731, eight years before the war began. Popular response to the incident was tepid until several years later, when opposition politicians and the British South Sea Company played it up, hoping to spur outrage against Spain, believing that a victorious war would improve Britain's trading opportunities in the Caribbean. In addition, the British wanted to keep pressure on Spain to honour their lucrative asiento contract, which gave British slave traders permission to sell slaves in Spanish America. The Spanish refer to this asiento in their name for this war.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/10/pressure-piles-on-boris-johnson-to-confirm-awareness-of-no-10-parties

Perhaps some of the UK based commenterati could weigh in here. My (totally jaundiced) viewpoint on this is, watching the various speakers tearing into Johnson and his crew provides measures of satisfaction and despair. Satisfaction because anything that makes Johnson look like the berk he really is is welcome. Despair because I wonder if this is the only way to get anything done. My own take is

-a year ago, Johnson and Johnson adjacent folks held Christmas parties despite there being a ban on such gatherings
-somehow, video of a practice press conference from that time comes to light
-everyone is shocked and horrified that the Conservatives can be so flippant with there rules for thee and not for me approach
-we begin to approach peak dudgeon as speakers vie to identify the most heart-wrenching scenarios to contrast with the flippancy of the Conservatives
-I begin to wonder if this is the only way things get done in the UK

This isn't to say that the States or anywhere else is better. But there seems to be a particularly British thing going on here, which is to seize on a tiny point when there have been enough things happening (see here, here and here) the size of barges to point to.

An open thread, of course.

A mid week high colonic

by liberal japonicus

I'm sorry folks, this started off as a comment, but ended up too long.

I've seen some stuff of Scott Atlas' book
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55141055

Now, I did get him confused with some of the other idiots, like this loser
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/us/politics/ronny-jackson-white-house-doctor.html

and who could forget this guy
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/14/harold-bornstein-trump-ex-doctor-dies-459293

which I would normally feel bad about, but in this case, not so much.

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/30/940376041/dr-scott-atlas-special-coronavirus-adviser-to-trump-resigns

I also remember the analysis of his qualifications, and the tweet that got him fired
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/16/politics/atlas-stanford-coronavirus-michigan/index.html

Anyway, it's the age-old story, idiot hires idiot, idiot gets fired, idiot moves on to grifting in some other way. The fact that he is/was a fellow in the Hoover Institute is the little detail that kills me

What made this get moved from a comment to a post was this choice shit sandwich by John Tierney
https://www.city-journal.org/review-of-a-plague-upon-our-house-by-scott-atlas

Atlas’s book, A Plague Upon Our House, is an astonishing read, even for those who have been closely following this disaster. A veteran medical researcher and health-policy analyst at the Hoover Institution, Atlas, a radiologist, joined the Task Force six months into the pandemic, after he had published estimates that lockdowns could ultimately prove more deadly than Covid.

Atlas expected to spend his time at the White House discussing scientific data and debating the best strategies for protecting public health. Instead, he found that the Task Force included “zero public health policy experts and no experts with medical knowledge who also analyzed economic, social, and other broad public health impacts other than the infection itself.” Vice President Mike Pence chaired the Task Force, but Atlas says that Pence and the other members were regularly cowed into submission by three doctors who dominated from the start: Deborah Birx, the Task Force’s coordinator, along with Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control.

Telling to me that the publishing house is Bombardier Books
https://posthillpress.com/bombardier-books

In a time when the media and much of America’s elite tries to limit and stifle debate in the name of sensitivity, safe spaces, and political correctness, now more than ever we need writers with courage and conviction—and the gift to be able to express themselves with intelligence, eloquence, and good humor. Now is the perfect time to unleash a torrent of provocative thought onto the political and cultural battleground.
This is the mission of Bombardier Books. Because sometimes you need to drop rhetorical bombs from 40,000 feet to get people to hear new ideas. Other times you need to target bad policies with laser precision to take them out before they do too much damage. And occasionally you need a tailgunner to defend your comrades-at-arms from sneak attacks.
This we do without fear, but always with one goal in mind: that free speech and open debate make for a stronger society. Only by hearing all voices can we sustain the American Experiment into the 21st century and beyond.

But this has to be one of those idiotic vanity presses lj! Errr, no....
https://posthillpress.com/about
We publish across all formats and platforms, including eBooks, audiobooks, and print books, which are distributed by Simon and Schuster and available worldwide.

and they are definitely playing both sides of the street.
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=3797#m49428
Post Hill Press's Bombardier Books is launching an imprint called Emancipation Books, which will "give a voice to black and minority authors--including conservatives, libertarians, traditional liberals, and iconoclasts--whose nonconforming views are seldom represented in mainstream media, and find themselves increasingly unwelcome at the larger publishing houses."

The name Tierney rang a bell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tierney_(journalist)

Tierney identifies himself as a libertarian and has become increasingly identified with libertarianism.

Joseph J. Romm has written that Tierney is one of the "influential but misinformed" skeptics who have helped prevent the United States from taking action on climate change. In his 2007 book Hell and High Water, Romm cites, and claims to refute, what he calls Tierney's "misinformation".[14] Columbia Journalism Review complains Tierney "has a tendency to support his point of view using sources with a clear ideological or special interest agenda, without properly identifying them".

In 2007 Tierney wrote a column claiming that Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's 1962 book on the detrimental effects of pesticides on the environment, is a "hodgepodge of science and junk science" whose rhetoric still "drowns out real science", such as the work of agricultural bacteriologist Ira Baldwin. Among those who have criticized the column for alleged errors of fact and misrepresentation are Erik M. Conway, Naomi Oreskes, and Merrill Goozner.

In 2016 Tierney criticized President Barack Obama for "politicized science to advance his agenda" and appointees in the Obama administration for "junk science—or no science—to justify misbegotten crusades against dietary salt, trans fats, and electronic cigarettes. According to Tierney, they cited phony statistics to spread myths about a gender pay gap and a rape crisis on college campuses".

God help us.

Hall of mirrors update open thread

by liberal japonicus

All the angles are here

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/02/facebook-owner-meta-takes-down-chinese-network-spreading-fake-covid-posts

Discuss that or something else!

Regarding Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

by wj

This term’s abortion law case (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization) looks to be a big deal. But what is likely to come of it? And what should we hope for?

Just to be clear at the start,
1) I personally think abortion should be legal,
2) IANAL, but I find the Court’s reasoning in Roe v. Wade particularly unconvincing. (Planned Parenthood v. Casey makes a much more solid Constitutional case on the subject.)

What do we have on the Court currently:
1 Chief Justice, who strongly desires that the Court as an institution be seen as impartial and important. (And is no doubt aware that it is losing ground rapidly on that.)
3 Solid reactionaries (Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch) who strongly desire to see Roe explicitly overturned. And, presumably, Casey as well -- never mind what bad impacts that would have on cases they care about where Casey was cited as a precedent.
3 Solid liberals (Kagen, Sotomayor, and Breyer) who strongly desire that Roe be upheld.
2 Political hacks (Kavanaugh and Barrett, although I may be doing Barrett a disservice on this one; she might be a solid reactionary as well.) Their priority would appear to be "What will do least harm to Republican electoral chances going forward?"

What are the possible outcomes?

1. The Court might simply uphold Roe, and toss the Mississippi law. Which would be amazing, since it would require both the Chief Justice and probably Kavanaugh to side with the liberals.
2. The Court might fudge the issue, letting the Mississippi law stand, but not directly addressing Roe. Which Roberts would probably prefer.
3. The Court might outright reverse Roe (as Brown v Board of Education did to Plessy v Ferguson).

At minimum, there would appear to be a plurality, even if not a majority, for reversing Roe. Not sure what the legal impact is if there is no majority, even with concurring opinions.

On balance, option 3 might actually be the preferable viable option. Why?!?!? you ask. Well consider. If the Court goes with option 2 (eviscerate, but not reverse), a lot of voters will simply go blithely along like nothing happened. Abortion is still nominally legal, after all. So why worry? Nothing has really changed – just another case of lots of noise from the anti-abortion folks, but nothing more. (Of course, it would be more. Not least because, once the “fetal viability” test is gone, there is no logical alternative threshold – any place a state wants to go is OK. 1 month? 1 week? 1 day? 1 hour, even? All equally defensible.)

Whereas with option 3, there is absolutely no doubt what has happened. Given what public opinion on the subject actually is, that would be a disaster for the anti-abortion folks. Because abortion would instantly become the single biggest issue for a lot of voters who didn't realize that it was a risk. And then their preferred candidates would likely get replaced en masse, even in pretty red states. (Which is why Kavanaugh, at least, might be seriously opposed.) Leading, quite possibly, to Federal legislation on the subject. Maybe even a Constitutional Amendment, to put the subject to bed once and for all.