Obsidian Wings

being the open thread requested

by liberal japonicus

An open thread was requested, have at it!

Lewiston

by JanieM

Thanks for the good thoughts in the other thread, everyone. I am safe at home, as is everyone among my family and friends as far as I know. It is 7:30 a.m., the next morning, and the suspected shooter still has not been found. Schools are closed all over central Maine, including the one near me – which, I grieve to say, has been at the edge of my worries about mass shootings for a long time, given that it has had a couple of bomb threats over the years and that school shootings have – horrifyingly! how?! – become an event people train to meet in this era in this land.

Pollo de Muerte – yes, I felt the dread immediately. Usually I find it hard not to roll my eyes at unsolicited advice, but in this case I appreciate it and will take it to heart.

I have a semi-distant relative whom I’ve never met, who was with her daughter at the concert in Las Vegas in 2017 where another mass shooting took place. She and her daughter were unhurt, but having someone connected to me there made the horror of it a little more vivid. Not that in the abstract I wasn’t continually horrified to begin with, but there’s a difference between rational recognition and the ability to imagine something in the gut.

This, as Pollo says, is different. The area where the shootings took place is familiar – I’ve spent a lot of time in Lewiston and Auburn over the years (they are twin cities on opposite sides of the Androscoggin River). I know people connected to Bates College, which is about midway between the two shooting sites, and have gone to events there and taken pictures of the campus. I have tried to imagine this feeling, but I never really got it until now, and this is without a doubt absolutely nothing compared to actually being caught up in an event like this.  (And I am not forgetting, as I write, that actual bombs are falling on actual people’s actual neighborhoods in other places in the world. “It can’t happen here” recedes ever further into fantasy land.)

As to what is wrong with this country that a good portion of it in effect worships the “freedom” to own weapons that will let people perpetrate this kind of horror – I am out of words.

The picture is of Lewiston, taken from the Auburn side of the Androscoggin. Bigger version here here.

A mid-week open thread

by liberal japonicus

It's been 4 days since the last post, so just thought I'd open something, see what everyone has. What fresh hells do folks see on the horizon?

And third on the list

by liberal japonicus

Right after a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire and a solution for Israel-Hamas, I suppose is How to fix the internet, which seems like a topic y'all might have a lot to say about. A few grafs

When the internet began to be built out commercially in the 1990s, its culture was, perversely, anticommercial. Many of the leading internet thinkers of the day belonged to a cohort of AdBusters-reading Gen Xers and antiestablishment Boomers. They were passionate about making software open source. Their very mantra was “Information wants to be free”—a phrase attributed to Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and the pioneering internet community the WELL. This ethos also extended to a passion for freedom of speech, and a sense of responsibility to protect it.

It's interesting for me here in Japan, because the internet was more the domain of businesses, you have a situation where all information is siloed, and this notion of information wanting to be free is not really as much a thing.

Our modern internet is built on highly targeted advertising using our personal data. That is what makes it free. The social platforms, most digital publishers, Google—all run on ad revenue. For the social platforms and Google, their business model is to deliver highly sophisticated targeted ads. (And business is good: in addition to Google’s billions, Meta took in $116 billion in revenue for 2022. Nearly half the people living on planet Earth are monthly active users of a Meta-owned product.) Meanwhile, the sheer extent of the personal data we happily hand over to them in exchange for using their services for free would make people from the year 2000 drop their flip phones in shock.

The writer's solution, that we just have to realize we need to pay for things sometimes, seems a bit off. To me, the problem is not that we have to pay for things, it is the underlying greed that permeates society. It's hard to escape it, you think you will stop when you have enough, but enough is never enough.

My toxic trait is I can’t shake that naïve optimism of the early internet. Mistakes were made, a lot of things went sideways, and there have undeniably been a lot of pain and misery and bad things that came from the social era. The mistake now would be not to learn from them.

It's interesting that the toxic trait of optimism is immediately followed by 'Mistakes were made'. That absence of agent tell us a lot. Have at it.

Science at the end of the world

by liberal japonicus

A science thread. Below the fold is a youtube video. A little background, Toyota, despite having an early lead in electric vehicles because of its development of the Prius, it refused to go all electric and has been beaten out by other companies, notably Honda. Toyota argued that going all electric was not a solution, though a lot of this came out after Toyota got beat up in the market place, leading shareholders to express their disappointment.

For those of you who aren't link readers, a few grafs from the Slate article

How did Toyota end up gagging on the electric-car revolution’s dust? Not by making a careless business oversight, but through methodical decisions that came from the top. And worse: The company has paired this lack of innovation with aggressive attempts to protect its position as the world’s most valuable car company by stopping electric vehicles from taking hold more broadly.

[...]

A generation ago, Toyota was ahead of most automakers in researching and deploying clean-energy tech, and it gradually electrified some of its biggest models while expanding its fleet of hybrids, both plug-in and not. Yet, as the ever-warming atmosphere and the ever-boiling chargers-versus-gas-pumps battles demonstrate, there’s a key difference between electrifying and going fully electric. Toyota’s focus on the former at the expense of the latter may have made sense previously thanks to its domination of the hybrid market, but as those sales plummet, it increasingly looks like a mistake.

[...]

Toyota head Akio Toyoda, heir to the family dynasty that launched his company nearly 100 years ago and current chair of the powerful Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, has consistently pooh-poohed EVs while doubling down on his beloved hybrids. That’s not to say he dismisses all energy innovations—his company loves it some hydrogen, though its fuel-cell fleets haven’t quite taken off. But to hear it from him, an all-EV transition would be as apocalyptic as a future in which we don’t attempt to clear up transportation emissions. When the Japanese government considered a California-style future ban on gas cars in late 2020, Toyoda went off at a JAMA press conference, denouncing EVs as a bunch of hype while warning that expanded use would lead to lost jobs and reduced power capacity. Toyoda’s successful pushback was in step with EV-related remarks he’s made over the years as the voice of both JAMA and Toyota. In 2021: “Carbon is our enemy, not the internal combustion engine.” In 2022: “Playing to win also means doing things differently. Doing things that others may question, but that we believe will put us in the winner’s circle the longest,” referring to his company’s bearishness on EVs. Last month: “People involved in the auto industry are largely a silent majority. That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK to have as a single option. But they think it’s the trend so they can’t speak out loudly.” (all links are from the article)

While I'm just an interested observer, whenever I hear people in power talking about a silent majority, I retch for a few moments. This is compounded by the people who pop up and talk about how going all electric is a woke thing and good on Toyota for standing up to the EV mafia. FFS.

Anyway, the video seems to be another shoe dropping (I would say the other, but that implies that there is only one shoe, but the world has shown us that there is an infinite supply of shoes to be dropped) which is Toyota's new ammonia based engine.

Now, maybe I'm just stuck in my position, but given what is known about ammonia, I'm still thinking that this is just another group of people trying to keep power by employing whatever they can to stop change. But that's just my first reaction, maybe I'm just not seeing it, hence the post, which could be about anything science-y. Knock yerselves out.

Be Joyful Though You Have Considered All the Facts

by JanieM

 

GftNC: Sunt lacrimae rerum.

The title of the post is from a poem I’m sure I’ve linked here before: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, by Wendell Berry.

Another: Place, by W. S. Merwin.

Easy for me to say “be joyful”; bombs are not falling on my neighborhood. But my despair won’t stop the bombs from falling, so I try to use the time that’s given to me as best I can.

One way I get to use it is in the company of a person of the future (to borrow nous’s phrase) who is not quite two years old. I play an eclectic mix of music for her from the astonishing variety available on YouTube, and she has three particular favorites, for each of which she will stop what she’s doing and come over to watch the videos, move to the music, and clap to the beat. (More or less.)

Yuja Wang’s encores, from 1:24:45 to the end of the video. [ETA: Time has been corrected.]

Dolly and friends. [ETA: link fixed.....]

Taylor and friends. I have to confess that I have never paid the slightest bit of attention to Taylor Swift. But she has been in the news lately for various reasons, and someone in a BJ comment thread linked to this song, which is nothing like what I imagined her music to be.

Open thread, especially for musical offerings.

*****

Bigger version of the picture, which was taken in Montgomery Woods State Natural Reserve, Mendocino County, California, in the spring of 2022. It was a magical trip for me.

We need a hat

by liberal japonicus

More bad news, the proposal to recognise Aboriginal people in Australia’s constitution has been rejected.

In the damned if you do, damned if you don't file

The referendum question, to amend Australia’s constitution to recognise the first peoples of Australia by establishing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to parliament, was deliberately vague. The failure of Australia’s previous referendum in 1999 – to become a republic and acknowledge Indigenous ownership – was seen to have failed because it put forward a specific model to voters.

Earlier in life, I got a cram course in Australian history and politics, and while I don't have any Aussies in my circle with whom I can talk about current politics, I've tried to follow what happens. It seemed to me that the requirement of a double majority (nationwide majority AND a majorities in 4 of the 6 states) was an idea that may have seemed great when it was proposed, but when the opponents brought out ambiguities and expanded those with lies, there was no way that it could overcome the people who would have not accepted it regardless.

I don't know if we have a lot of Aussies or Aussie adjacent folks here, but if we do, have at it.

Open letter to McKinneyTexas

From wj, lj and JanieM

[note: russell too, so for those keeping track at home, 4 for, none against]

 

Russell hasn't replied, but strike while the Iron Dome is hot

 

Quoting McKinneyTexas, and afterward addressed to him:

You and all of the other headliners here have had plenty of time to square reality with your "we're not anti-semitic, we just don't support Israel" claims. You haven't. Because, fundamentally, you cannot.

 

and

 

I look forward the the contextualization of why Israeli civilians, particularly children, had this coming.

These accusations, particularly the second one, are so vile and so detached from reality that we are not willing to let them stand without a response. WIth that in mind, you are banned unless you reply with an apology and a promise to not do this again, a promise that you will be held to.

The current “headliners” – assuming you mean the people who write front-page posts – are, and have been for a long time, a small crew consisting of lj, wj, russell, and JanieM.

Leaving aside the implication that we all think in lockstep, we challenge you to produce a single post or comment by any one of the three of us that translates to what you’re accusing us of believing, especially your repulsive assertion that we think children had it coming. With a link, please, so that we can see that you haven’t lifted our words out of context, stripped them of all intelligence and nuance, and turned them into cartoon villainy that you can then attack.

You also suggest that *not* writing about the topic is some sort of proof, but absent any other support for your accusations, you can't do this without being called out.

 

You may be assuming that there is some sort of connection between the current crew and people who have previously written here. There have been some front-page posts as well as comments on I/P issues, but regardless, none of the previous front pagers should be subject to the accusations you make. But, just to be clear, please don't present us with something that was previously written by someone else here and use it to justify what you wrote. Not that we think anyone did write anything like that, but this is an issue between the current crew and you.

You have been blocked here, so if you would like to apologize in order to be unblocked, you can send an email to the address listed on the blog ([email protected]) and we can decide if we can accept it. We are also closing the comments to this post, so while we appreciate that others may want to defend your right to express your opinions, or may think that we are not willing to entertain uncomfortable truths, we don't feel we can allow you to think that you can write what you did and do so "whenever and wherever [you] like".

The war

Take your pick.

Keeping an Eye on Things

by JanieM

Hard to know where to start, so I won't. 

Open thread.

*****

The picture was taken in Belfast, Maine, in May of 2021. The gulls know whose territory it is.

Bigger version here.