Obsidian Wings

Sincerity, Ukraine and a punchier Oscars

by liberal japonicus

This is really a little too close to a 'hawt takes' approach, but it took up residence in my head space, so here it is, below the fold

A book recommendation post

by liberal japonicus

A thread for book recommendations. It grows out of the suggestion that a closer reading of Military Science Fiction would have stood some in better stead, so I'm open to people defining what Military SF is and how it differs from, say Star Trek.

As a side note, I have a friend here who is writing to break into the YA (Young Adult) market, though she's mightily frustrated about how YA is (and is not) defined.

And anything else that can be found either between two covers or could appear on your ipad or kindle. Have at it.

Ketanji Brown Jackson

by liberal japonicus

As a quick post, this WaPo article was interesting for the way it organized the information. Anyway, a thread to discuss, have at it.

Ukraine: a few things to read

by liberal japonicus

This came across my morning reading, it's an analysis of a Chinese news broadcast on Ukraine. Tucker Carlson makes an appearance.

The report is from early in the conflict and one hopes that Chinese viewers don't have as short and febrile a memory as we seem to have in America and are able to keep this in mind

Wu Dahui, from the Institute of Russian Studies at Tsinghua University talks about Iskandar missiles and other weapons. He is supremely confident of Russia’s prowess. He says that up against these awesome weapons, the Ukraine defense, little better than local militia, doesn’t stand a chance. “Give it an hour, three hours, even ten hours, they lose.”

and compare it to what has happened.

Also, Ezra Klein's podcast interview with Timothy Snyder. I found the discussion about language fascinating and it had me google other stuff he has done and his substack piece, written before the invasion, has this.

I keep being asked whether Russia will invade Ukraine again. I don't know. The last time Russia attacked Ukraine, in 2014, I made the correct prediction against the prevailing wisdom. This time we are all aware that Russia might invade Ukraine: after all, it happened once already, not so very long ago, and Russia has more than a hundred thousand troops at the border in addition to the ones stationed in the parts of Ukraine that it already occupies. But I am not sure what will happen next. I am not sure that the Kremlin knows what will happen next. Indeed, I am not sure that there is agreement among Russian elites as to what should happen next.

I don't know about you, but it is like a cool breeze on a sultry day to hear someone say "I don't know".

Open Thread

by JanieM

Maybe we need a reboot. Here's a thread for talking about whatever comes up.

Ukraine?

Covid-19, which is by no means finished with us, even if most of us think we're finished with it?

The soon-to-be-rising price of flour?

The falling value of people's savings?

The fact that many, many systems are kind of raggedy around the edges right now?

Take travel.

I succeeded in making a plane reservation the other day despite two hour+ sessions on hold and a JetBlue software fail that was almost funny. (But not really.)

Preparing to make a reservation for a Covid-postponed trip, I gave in to Big Brother and made myself a TrueBlue frequent flyer account. The form asked for my full legal name. I included my middle initial even though it was labeled optional, because that's part of my legal name, and rules are rules.

Then I went over to the reservations page, where TrueBlue filled in my name for me and I filled in a bunch of other stuff. But when I clicked "Continue," it said I couldn't because the middle initial field was invalid. What's more, I couldn't correct it, because you couldn't type in name fields that had been filled in automatically.

I went back to the TrueBlue page to fix what I was pretty sure was the problem: I had put a period after my middle initial.

But you can't change your name once you enter it; federal blah law blah rules blah blah blah.

So -- Jet Blue accepts a bit of punctuation on one page that is invalid on another that it auto-fills, and there is no way to fix the problem without, you guessed it, another hour+ long wait on hold.

Before I tackled that challenge, I made myself a reservation without invoking TrueBlue, and without using my middle initial, because I was afraid that if I waited too long the plane would be full. It crossed my mind that I might regret this later -- having two versions of my name in the system and all, maybe Homeland Security won't like that. But I took the risk anyhow.

A very nice, very patient man on the help line fixed the name problem, and even merged my reservation with my TrueBlue account. The fact that he immediately understood this mess was only marginally less surprising than that I was also sweet and pleasant through the whole conversation.

First world problems. There are no bombs falling on my neighborhood. I wish there were no bombs falling on anyone's neighborhood, but I don't know how to make them stop, or prevent them from being dropped in the first place. So I'm donating $ where I can, both locally and for Ukrainians, and otherwise living the same pandemic-shaped life as I have for the past two years, almost to the day. (The NBA shut down on March 11, 2020, Disney World a couple of days later. That's about when a lot of people sat up and took notice.)

Ukraine and racism

by liberal japonicus

The discussion about 'tankies' in the comments had me thinking about a number of things. I imagine all of you have seen various discussions of how the Ukraine conflict has laid bare some racist thinking. If you haven't, these two Daily Show segments can probably catch you up.
Here and here
Or this one, which gives the story without the jokes
Here

A few observations, I hope they are of interest. I'm certainly not up on all the coverage, what I get is largely English (US/UK) and I haven't followed any of European outlets as things have gone so quickly. But I think that there are some different threads to the differential reaction to Ukraine that need to be disentangled. Obviously, the reports about how the Ukrainian refugees are somehow 'more like us' along with the idea that this is a bigger tragedy because it is a 'civilized' country are underpinned by racism. But there are other factors.

I feel that some people want to feed that war jones. A major thread of the punditocracy is wanting to talk about military strategy and tactics. Now, having folks like the Ukrainians makes it a lot easier to discuss conflicts like that as opposed to ones where the US is on one side. And there is also a love of the underdog that can't be trotted out when the underdog is Iraq or, god forbid, Palestine. So you've got a (probably mythical) Ghost of Kyiv, but you don't have the equivalent for the Gaza strip. And while I'm sure Palestinians have told Israeli troops to f**k off, it seems so much more exciting when it is a bunch of Ukrainians on Snake Island making their last stand. Adducing that the people cheering on the Ukrainians are racist might be a stretch, depending on the person.

I imagine that people who were drawn to something like Civil War reenactment might be excited for a 'good war' that might provide more rhetorical defenses that running around in butternut grey. (I should acknowledge, I was a wargamer, with a subscription to Strategy and Tactics, and played war games all through high school. So I understand the impulse)

Finally, there is also that Russia is the one getting bloody nose. I used to have a t-shirt that said 'I'll root for the Cowboys when they play the Russians'. I remember Dana Rohrbacher, wing-nut from Orange County, who fought with the Taliban when they were fighting the Russians.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/04/dana-rohrabacher-afghanistan-war/

The word 'civilized' is interesting too, the US embassy in Ukraine's twitter troll in response to Putin's ahistoricism
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-embassy-trolls-russia-meme-after-putin-ukraine-history-rant-2022-2

underlines how it's always the good guys who are civilized, the bad guys aren't, and some of the reactions to Russians have an underpinning of racism as well.
https://www.axios.com/russian-businesses-us-vandalism-threats-bdde1c92-d661-48d5-9157-c540964b00fb.html

I suppose that in a laboratory, you could isolate these. A person who is so in love with underdogs that when an actual military is an underdog, they can let their flag fly. I mean, civil war reenactors, A person steeped in the notion of commie bastards can jump on the side of Ukraine whole heartedly despite not having a racist bone in their body. But in the real world, nothing is 100% pure.

Here in Japan, there has been a lot of support, the government, notorious for its eyedropper approach for accepting refugees, has shown a remarkable willingness to accept Ukrainian refugees
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Ukraine-war/Japan-Inc.-steps-up-fast-to-offer-support-to-Ukraine-refugees
though the devil is in the details

On the other hand, Uniqlo, a Japanese fast fashion brand, is resisting calls to pull back from Russia
https://www.forbes.com/sites/markfaithfull/2022/03/08/fast-retailing-defiant-as-it-keeps--russian-uniqlo-stores-open/?sh=44ef9b5c36a0

which will be interesting to see if there is a consumer backlash.

There is also a historical echo, after the Russian Revolution, a large number of Russians came to Japan and formed enclaves, most notably in Kobe and Tokyo.
https://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/130000994724/amp/en

Unfortunately, while this article gives 5 possible outcomes, I think there is only 2. One, the Ukrainians are screwed, with some sort of echo of the Troubles in Ireland or we all are screwed.

Anyway, a new thread.

A brass etymology thread

by liberal japonicus

A thread for non Ukraine stuff.

Mentioned in the comments was a shortage of brass as it relates to ammunition. I wanted to make a cutesy comment about how I didn't think there was really a shortage of brass (with the meaning of gall, chutzpah, etc) and went off to look for a link that might reference that so I wasn't just tossing it out there, which took me enjoyably down the rabbit hole.

Apologies for slipping into lecture mode, Brass actually is quite interwoven with human history. As an alloy of copper and zinc, it was known to the Romans, but never produced reliably because zinc wasn't viewed as a metal so it only gets going after the Medieval age. On the other hand, the production of bronze (copper and tin) as an alloy of two metals, was probably more understandable.

The timing of figuring out how to make brass synchs with the King James bible, so you have lots of references to brass there as well as the rise of orchestral music, giving you brass instruments. A YouTube video (that might require a trigger warning for musicians) of a damaged horn being repaired.

The word has been floating around my head because someone described Boris Johnson has having a 'brass neck'. It's interesting that definitions of that also include 'gall', which not only related to a bodily fluid from the bile duct and gall bladder (the IE etymology is related to yellow) but also related to metals as a verb (to gall) which now has me wonder if there is some connection there.

Anyway, a non Ukraine thread for whatever.