Obsidian Wings

"Your rage does not exist in a vacuum"

by liberal japonicus

The title is from Michelle Obama's speech. Pretty powerful stuff. It is pretty interesting what different pieces take away as the key point. The whole process of a headline is pretty destructive to a speech that was a defense of Harris' qualifications, a call out of Trump, a call to arms for women, an address to men to step up and probably a few other things. I'm also wondering about the following:

-There was a lot of talk about an October Surprise, was it Trump is a fascist? It seems like Kelly's comments were anticipated by a lot of people in the media, and was more of damp squib.

-This MSNBC piece has the former GOP representative a 'whisper caucus' of GOP voters going for Harris, I'd love to believe this, but I don't know.

A open thread about the election as the last one is a week old.

With bated breath

by liberal japonicus

I don't know about y'all, but I am having that feeling that I get watching a horror movie and not sure who is going to die. I won't try and give you even a short list of what I've been reading, just this

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/20/elon-musk-promises-to-award-1m-every-day-to-voters-as-he-steps-up-campaigning-for-trump

Elon Musk said his Trump-supporting political action committee – America Pac – will give $1m every day until election day to someone who signs his petition that effectively encourages Republicans in the key battleground states to register to vote.

The commitment, which started on Saturday as Musk handed a lottery-style check to the first winner of his contest at a town hall event, could mean Musk is on the hook for $17m if he remains the sole donor to his own Pac.

Maybe a democrat will win it. Or maybe it will be ruled illegal and disqualify Trump (a boy can dream)

There's tons more stuff, but hope that works as a open thread invitation.

Being the best

by liberal japonicus

Before COVID, I did martial arts. I'm afraid I've stopped, but in compensation, I spend an inordinate amount of time watching Youtube videos about them and came across this one, where Neil Adams, a British judoka who was a world champion and an Olympian silver medalist was being interviewed by Lex Fridman. Neil Adams tells a story (starts here) to illustrate how people who are basically unknown can be incredibly talented. His story is of the British Olympic judo team going to train in Japan in order to experience some different sparring partners, and at one training session, a guy in a suit and tie with a briefcase comes in during his lunch hour, changes into his judo togs and basically goes through the entire British judo team. During his lunch hour. He then changes back into his suit and tie and goes back to work, briefcase at his side. Adams goes on to point out that there are people like that 'in the mix' who may never come out.

While my first thought was the anecdote about the English football team going to play a friendly in Brazil, deciding to have a laugh and play football on the beach, where they were trounced by a pick up team of Brazilian guys, my second thought was of David Foster Wallace's essay about Michael Joyce, a journeyman tennis pro ranked at that time in the top #100. A number of people have picked up Wallace's observation that the gulf between any 'regular player' and someone in the top 100 is massive. Some have said that the essay is about that, but re-reading it makes me think that it is only a peripheral observation, not the meat of the essay. Still, it is often kicked around, but it seems like the opposite of the Neil Adams story. A lot has to do with the set up of the sports, it is hard to imagine someone unknown to the world wandering in and taking a game, let alone a set or a match from a top-ranked tennis player. On the other hand, with a sport like judo, where it is part of Japanese national culture, one can easily imagine even the stronger national teams coming over and getting their asses handed to them

Niels Bohr said that the opposite of a fact was a falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth is another profound truth, which is how I line these stories up. Yes, the gap between the top 100 or 200 or 500 is yawning chasm, but there are probably people out there who could wander in and give the best a run for their money. Sadly, the absolute truth is that it won't be me.

An open thread for sports and sports-like observations.

Considering The message

by liberal japonicus

The previous thread is getting creaky, so I have a separate thread in mind to write after this, but I (and I'm not sure if this is a great idea) am going to put up this thread about Ta-Nehisi Coates' new book, The Message. While the book follows in the footsteps of his book Between the World and Me, with the questions that Coates is always returning to remain 'who am I? And what do I, and should I, represent?'. The book is divided into three sections, but the section that is getting all the attention is his last section that deals with his trip to Palestine and his observations while there. This focus on the last section without understanding how the first two sections tie into it is unfortunate, but not unexpected.

As an example of this, Coates' appearance on CBS and the first observation by Tony Dokoupil (at 1:40), which was

I have to say when I when I read the book I imagine if I took your name out of it, took away the awards and the acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes away, the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.

Coates had a much more sympathetic interlocuter in Ali Velish on MSNBC.

Coates also had a long talk with Ezra Klein on Klein's NYT podcast, which had some points of disagreement and again, concentrated on the last section to the exclusion of the other two.

Velish also mentioned Coates' talk with Trevor Noah, which is the most interesting one to me, because, while wrestling with what his identity is, Noah, Coates and Christiana Mbakwe Medina, who was a staff writer for the Daily Show, touch on a lot of interesting points while avoiding the I/P landmines.

To round that out, here is Coates' Daily Show appearance.

There are several other appearances, and I've been able to read a copy. If this were a just world, it would be a useful starting point, the questioning of our selves before trying to adjudicate others, but I think it isn't and we will continue to see the tactical overwhelm the strategic, with the goal of both sides to simply inflict as much pain and suffering on the other side.

Kamala's mom

by liberal japonicus

Folks who have been here awhile might now that I've written a few times about my parents, and how people are formed by their parents is something that I take a great interest in. Here's probably the post that is closest to this (with some links to other things I wrote in the post). So I find this deep dive article about Kamala's mom. Just a few pull grafs.

She arrived in the United States at the very vanguard of a profound shift — a shift, ongoing and unabated, that stokes many of the most contentious debates within this bitter political time. She is, yes, an avatar of a widely relatable struggle to make ends meet, but she also was much more than some minimal symbol. By making the choices she made, by raising her daughters the ways she did, she changed the country. It might sound like a stretch. She was, admittedly, just one woman. If, though, Kamala Harris is a sort of quintessential 21st-century American — multiracial, multiethnic, the next-generation progeny of a pioneer of an immigrant — it’s also not totally wrong. Shyamala Gopalan helped shape the mindset and makeup of modern America.

and

And yet last week in a speech her campaign billed as an immigration speech, in Douglas, Arizona, southeast of Tucson and down by the border with Mexico, she said “there are consequential issues at stake in this election, and one is the security of our border.” She said there are “rules.” She said as attorney general of California she “prosecuted transnational criminal organizations.” She said she “brought a bipartisan group of American attorneys general and led that group to travel to Mexico City to meet with Mexican attorneys general to address this issue.” She said immigrants “who cross our borders unlawfully will be apprehended and removed and barred from reentering for five years.” She also said we “need clear, legal pathways for people seeking to coming into our country.” She said we are “a nation of immigrants.” And the woman about whom some not small portion of the population say they still need to know more said “the United States has been enriched by generations of people who have come from every corner of the world to contribute to our country and to become part of the American story.”

She did not mention her mother.

Some might take this as a fundamental urge to deceive. If she doesn't mention her mother, the question might go, was she really that important? Yet for me, I can understand that this is what she has to do. And I also understand why this is why I would never be a politician. As the article notes earlier

But short of the color of her skin and the country from which she came, I said the other day on the phone with Madrid, Shyamala Gopalan is precisely what those even way to the right on the spectrum of the most stringent immigration debate point to as the model. She was one of a small number of people coming in — low and slow. She was high-achieving. She started a family. She endeavored to assimilate. She contributed to this country — didn’t just “take” from it. “She,” I said to Madrid, “is what they say they want.”

“That’s easy to say when you’re 90-percent white. When you’re not, do we still say that? Well, no — half of us are saying, ‘Fuck no.’ It’s the primary political glue that’s holding one of our political parties together,” he said.

“My mother … came and changed America?” said Madrid. “That ain’t gonna play in Erie County.” (links from the article)

What precisely will play in Erie county is the question...

The Health of a Nation

by liberal japonicus

The last thread on the VP debate didn't take off, and I don't blame you, I threw up in my mouth a little to hear Vance lay out his plans for Lebensraum. But rather than talk about that, I wanted to talk a bit about another topic, health insurance. I read somewhere that in the UK, Labour wanted to follow in the footsteps of New Zealand in tobacco policy. An explainer is here, and it was subsequently taken off the books. One of the main drivers was said to be the reduction in medical costs. By having progressive legal age increases, along with requirements for reduced nicotine, as the population ages, you remove smokers from the mix. I'm not a smoker, so I could support this with little problem, but I could see how complaints about the heavy hand of government would be raised.

When I first came to Japan, smoking was really common. If you walked through a smoking car in the Shinkansen, it would be like walking into a solid fog, and riding on highway buses would often leave you smelling like an ashtray. But about 10 or 15 years ago, there was a big push, similar to other developed countries, to make facilities non-smoking, and force smokers into small areas. Japan would never, I imagine, try progressive legal age increases, the tax revenue is too much (which is the reason why New Zealand backtracked on their attempt). But because Japan excels in public shame, while you have smokeless electronic cigarettes, you don't have people vaping like I say the last time I was in the UK, where they seemed to be surrounded by huge clouds.

Anyway, the idea of dealing with the health of a nation in this way came to mind when I read this article about Tokyo Verdy Beleza, a Japanese womans' football team that has sent a huge number of players to overseas teams. The article tries to explain why this is, and one point is this:

Writing in an academic publication in 2019, the doctorate sociologist Osamu Takamine referred to the rapid increase in sports participation that occurs as children approach junior high school age, the years most commonly associated with the development of technical skills.

Which got me to thinking, one of the interesting features of secondary education here is that the majority of students participate in sports teams as part of their schooling. There are also ther options, 'brass band' (i.e school band), drama, speech etc. But I'd say that a lot of kids end up playing a sport.

I know that it is taking a long time to get to the point, but one of the interesting side effects is that I think happens is that this is another reason why the Japanese population is much healthier than the US or UK. The obesity rate in Japan is 4.2%, while in the US, it is 42.7%. Of course, it isn't just getting in some sports in JHS, it is diet, it is public transporation, walkable cities, and probably a bunch of other reasons. But it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that a government might want to set up regimes that target getting people in better shape, with the payoff being that people need less medical care. But I'm sure that would be a non-starter in the US.

Anyway, feel free to talk about any concepts of a plan that you might have.

a debate open thread

by liberal japonicus

I've heard that there was a debate happening somewhere, so this is a thread for it.