What Next?

There is a column over on Digby’s Hullabaloo this morning on Trump’s increasing dementia.  It will probably have to get a lot worse before the members of his Cabinet and Republicans in Congress will be willing to act to remove him.  But it is at least possible that they will do so before the end of his term. 

So, if that happens, what next?  What could we expect from a Vance administration?  Fewer abrupt reversals, perhaps.  Possibly some replacement for farcical appointees by people who are halfway competent. 

I think it might be good to give some serious thought to what we would be looking at, and to what we might need to do to oppose that.  Because I can see how it might be even worse for the country as a whole.  While requiring a different approach to opposition.

Open Thread

Comments

[Las]

I'm sorry, but that just seems like standard Trump. The difference between elected Trump an and demented Trump is minimal.

[Hartmut]

Vance has been called the Spiro Agnew of His Orangeness. Implying that he is considered worse and thus an insurance policy for the president against removal.

[wj]

Ah, but worse on what standard?

Note that, just because we think Vance would be worse (and I think that's debatable both ways) doesn't guarantee that those who are in positions to make, or even influence, that decision take the same view. Nor that the criteria we would use to assess dementia are the same ones they would use.

[Cheez Whiz]

As far as President Vance goes, you have to ask yourself "what would a resentful man absolutely consumed with ambition, who has taken wildly contradictory positions throughout his short political career, do as President?".

Seems pretty obvious. He will assume the expected role of President, while pursuing the same political agenda. Trumpism, minus the drama and personal retribution, or in other words standard Republican dogma. Vance has repeatedly proven he can say what the moment demands with a straight face, no matter what it is. He can play President in his sleep. He can't hold the MAGA coalition together, no one beyond Trump can, but that probably won't matter.

[CaseyL]

I don't see why you think the Cabinet or Congress will act to remove Trump, no matter what he does or says.

They fear his base, who may well not vote for anyone but him, and may react violently to his removal.

Now, if he were to simply suddenly drop dead...

[Donald]

I watched the Schuster video and maybe Trump is showing signs of dementia, but to me his behavior seems the same as it always was. He has always been a touchy, grandiose egomaniac who flips out at anyone who he perceives as criticizing him and he is only loosely attached to reality.

So his dementia, if that is what this is, is just a slightly enhanced version of what he already was.

[wj]

He has long been loosely attached to reality. But he used to be relatively consistent within the context of the alternate reality that he lived in. Increasingly, he is loosing even that.

Where once he would like reflexively, but consistently, now he seems to simply not be able to keep track. Even of the lies he spoke earlier in the same conversation. A good con man (and he was a gifted one) doesn't do that -- too much chance that the mark will notice.

[Hartmut]

Clarification:
The GOP leadership would likely prefer Vance (despite personally loathing him) because he would indeed be a more reliable and more competent* in executing the GOP agenda.

The 'insurance' would be for the case that the Dems got a majority in Congress. As vile as Vance is, he'd probably be more difficult to impeach due to lack of crimes the public could easily understand (as opposed to his boss who could as well have a short list of laws he has yet to break).
So, getting rid of His Orangeness would likely get Vance into office at least temporarily.
Assuming that he is aware that he could not mobilize the base as his boss and thus facing defeat in the next presidential election, he'd be the one for the real coup d'etat. And I fear the GOP is gone far enough these days to follow him on that path.

*a low bar admittedly

[Michael Cain]

Ars Technica took Google's latest Veo 3 audio-video generator for a spin. From the prompt "An old professor in front of a class says, 'Without a firm historical context, we are looking at the dawn of a new era of civilization: post-history.'" it generated this:

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/An_old_professor_202505290828.mp4?_=2

All of the examples are worth looking at just to see how fast the state of the art is progressing.

This month I started working on tools for my massive new project as "family archivist", getting ready to digitize and organize the mountain of paper media my relatives have dumped on me. I'm wondering if perhaps it would be better to leave it as paper that can be dated if it ever needs to be authenticated. Google's getting close to taking an old picture or two and generating video of g'g'grandpa driving his horse and buggy past his house...

[JanieM]

Michael: I'm wondering if perhaps it would be better to leave it as paper that can be dated.

Why not both? You're not intending the destroy the paper copies after you've digitized them, are you?

[GftNC]

I agree with those who say the Schuster clips look like the same ol' same ol' Trump.

On Vance, some of you may find this, from David Frum in the Atlantic, interesting (I read the transcript, didn't listen to the recording):

https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/05/the-david-frum-show-vances-bargain-with-the-devil/682954/?gift=cx0iluuWx4Cg7JjlT8ugCdxbXUC1U3mbz6HcPn2byew&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

The latter half, a discussion with George Packer, is as I say quite interesting on Vance. But I have to say, I particularly liked Frum's description of Trump where he contrasts him psychologically with Vance:

Donald Trump is, perhaps, not that interesting a human being. I mean, obviously, it’s a hugely consequential presidency, shocking in its effects on the United States and the world. And understanding why Donald Trump is doing what he’s doing, that’s important and necessary. But as a person, there doesn’t seem to be much in there. He’s like some beast, some crocodile: He eats. He dominates. He hurts. He’s an adaptive predator, but his interior story is not that interesting.

[GftNC]

Oh, I meant to add this from today's Guardian, about how (blackly amusingly) RFK Jnr's MAHA "gold-standard science" report contains citations to non-existent studies:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/29/rfk-jr-maha-health-report-studies

[nous]

I'd be willing to bet that Bobby Brainworm & Co. farmed out their report research to GenAI and didn't bother checking the results because it fit their biases. One of my ex-housemates (who has gone way down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole) did the same with her own "research" a year ago. She was thrilled that her prompts were revealing so much about how problematic all this medical research has been, especially since she admitted that she did not have the time to look it all up herself and read over the original research. She totally relied on a bot to find and interpret everything for her.

I gave up on trying to talk to the anti-modern medicine types a while back. They do not listen and they do not test their own biases.

[russell]

If Trump was suffering from dementia, how would you know? What would be different?

Vance seems like kind of a cipher to me. Like he sold his soul a while back and is just kind of coasting on autopilot at this point.

As a somewhat related aside, in every picture I've seen of Rubio since he took the Sec of State gig, his eyes just look dead.

I get that you don't travel in those circles without a more-than-healthy dose of ambition, but all of these people just seem like they're inhabiting some circle of hell or other.

Except Trump. He seems to be having the time of his life.

[wj]

If Trump was suffering from dementia, how would you know? What would be different?

I'd say that what matters isn't whether Trump suffers from dementia. It's whether it has progressed to the point that those around him feel compelled to act.

What would that point be? Don't know. Maybe when they can no longer figure out what the marching orders of the day/hour are. Maybe when they can't get him to say something even vaguely coherent for the cameras. Maybe not until he loses track of the fact that he's President.

I don't have the experience, let alone expertise, to know how fast decline is likely to be at this point. Perhaps the current level will continue for years. Perhaps he will lose the ability to speak before the end of summer. I just don't know -- beyond being aware that individual cases can vary.

But what I am sure of is that ignoring the possibility is asking for trouble. At minimum, we should be wargaming what those around him, and those in a position to use him for the moment, are likely to do when whatever the threshold is is reached. And preferably give a bit of thought to how to respond. Because ad libs work ever so much better when they are scripted out ahead of time.

[liberal japonicus]

RFK Jnr's MAHA "gold-standard science" report contains citations to non-existent studies

On the PBS News Hour, they had the FDA commissioner "Dr." Martin A. Makary (the quotes indicate my skepticism of any actual medical training) and this question killed me (starts at 42:14)

I want to ask you about some reporting just today from the news organization NOTUS about that landmark MAHA report you put out recently, the Make America Healthy Again report. They found that it cited a number of sources that don't appear to exist at all, at least one scientist's name included on a paper she says she never wrote. When we checked on the report later today, it looked like it had been updated. Some of those false sources and names were removed. But what do you want people to know about how that bad information got in there in the first place?

DR. MARTY MAKARY: Well, there's over 500 references and citations in that report. It's an incredible report. Look, I have written medical journal studies in the peer review literature and some of the citations may not be perfect in the way that they're described there.

AMNA NAWAZ: But do you include citations that don't exist for sources that don't exist?

ouch....

[CharlesWT]

I'd say that what matters isn't whether Trump suffers from dementia. It's whether it has progressed to the point that those around him feel compelled to act.

Déjà vu all over again.

[GftNC]

It's whether it has progressed to the point that those around him feel compelled to act. What would that point be?

That point would be never. Aided enormously by their self-justification using the example of Biden's people. And the people who would then be running the thing would be even more dangerous.

At minimum, we should be wargaming what those around him, and those in a position to use him for the moment, are likely to do when whatever the threshold is is reached. And preferably give a bit of thought to how to respond.

On that last sentence, I can't think of thing. What's necessary, given all destruction of norms, is for a consensus to form such as "Given the public's justified worry about recent events, we need to institute mandatory annual testing of every president, with the results made public." But where are these people capable of forming such a consensus? Nowhere. If the Dems say it, the Biden situation neuters them. The current lot of Rs will never say it.

Someone? Anyone?

[novakant]

Since this is an open thread:

Will anyone stop Israel?

History is not going to look kindly on those that had the power to do something and didn't.

Gaza subjected to forced starvation, top UN official tells BBC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0k3d1y10pzo

People in Gaza starving, sick and dying as aid blockade continues

https://www.who.int/news/item/12-05-2025-people-in-gaza-starving--sick-and-dying-as-aid-blockade-continues

Meanwhile Israel's foreign minister says Israel wants to establish a "Jewish-Israeli state in the West Bank" and announces 22 new settlements:

https://www.barrons.com/news/israel-minister-says-we-will-build-jewish-israeli-state-in-west-bank-095b2e4c

[novakant]

Oh, and Trump had to tell Netanyahu not bomb Iran:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/us/politics/trump-iran-nuclear-deal-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.LE8.hPjw.rioM9vW1A4K9&smid=url-share

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-calls-new-york-times-report-iran-nuclear-talks-fake-news-2025-05-28/

[Cheez Whiz]

The only thing I can imagine that could cause the Republican Party to "take action" against Trump is an order for a nuclear strike, and even that is a coin toss. The 25th Amendment is essentially a process to follow once the President is in a coma, and this cabinet would have to be forced somehow to invoke it. Pretty good level of control for a senile old man, huh?

[nous]

I've been watching the WH response to the MAHA study with a certain amount of professional interest. If you want to know just how mendacious the whole thing is, compare the Washington Free Beacon's and NY Post's reporting on patchwriting in Claudine Gay's publications versus the WH statement and RW reporting around the MAHA review.

As a 20-year writing instructor, I can say with a fair degree of certitude that Gay's originality problems reflect her not being the strongest of writers and looking for better ways to express the information in her papers. It *could* also indicate an incomplete synthesis of her outside sources in her thinking, but at the very least she had read and thought about all of the sources that she cited.

The MAHA report, on the other hand, is entirely suspect. The fact that nonexistent studies were cited casts doubt on whether anyone involved has actually gone out and done a review of the literature or if they have just relied upon summaries provided by AI when fed leading prompts that begged the question. Removing the hallucinatory citations is not a matter of poor editing, it's a sign of intellectual dishonesty that should destroy the credibility of all involved.

If the people involved were students of mine, I'd handle the first with further instruction and the second with reporting them to the university for an academic integrity investigation.

The way that RW media went after Gay and has mostly let the MAHA issue go tells us everything we need to know about their journalistic ethics.

Not that this surprises anyone here.

[Pro Bono]

In another life, before LLMs, I used to read a lot of papers in some depth. It was routine to find references which didn't say what they were claimed to say, but there were never references which didn't even exist.

[Pro Bono]

It's hard to imagine circumstances short of a coma in which the Rs would invoke the 25th to replace Trump. It's true that inability to recognise what is factual, gross deficiency in analytical reasoning capability, and a total lack of attention to detail make a person incapable of being an effective president. But that was Trump's status during his first presidency, let alone this one.

[Hartmut]

All hail president Commodus.
Waiting for Washington D.T.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/republican-bill-name-dc-metro-trump-train-part-ridiculous-pattern-rcna209970

Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) introduced a bill Thursday to rename the Washington, D.C., subway system after President Trump and his MAGA slogan. The Make Autorail Great Again Act would withhold federal funding to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, known as WMATA, until it rebrands as the Washington Metropolitan Authority for Greater Access, or WMAGA — a similar acronym to the Make America Great Again slogan — and renames the Metrorail the Trump Train.

Below that is an (incomplete) list of other ridiculous rebranding and renaming proposals.
Sycophants are clearly not an endangered species.

[nous]

Another aside - I've been re-reading William Gibson's second trilogy, and this bit from Idoru stopped me in my tracks last night with its prescient and succinct assessment of the challenges of our current moment:

[Slitscan's audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.

Science fiction does a lot more than just extrapolate the curve of our future, but this particular one seems bang on.

[Dave W.]

@Pro Bono: I used to try to check the citations in conference papers I was reviewing when I had the time to spend in the library. I have seen some cases of wrong journal names, wrong dates, or wrong volume numbers, but I could usually find the original source eventually. In some cases those were just typos, in others I think it was the authors copying an incorrect citation from another source without looking it up themselves. But today it would be a whole other story.

[wonkie]

Trump's approval rating is still around forty-five percent. That's how many Americans are okay with fascism, corruption, and racism as long as it doesn't directly affect them.

[Michael Cain]

Why not both? You're not intending the destroy the paper copies after you've digitized them, are you?

Simple answer, "Yes, for the most part."

Long answer...

It seems inevitable that I will go through another major downsizing (unless I die before I get to that). The paper copies, especially organized and filed so that someone can get from the digital archive to the source paper, will take up more volume than I can likely spare.

Years ago I started converting a lifetime's collection of fiction books to e-book formats to start on the volume problem. Last time I checked, something over 900 titles now. Discussion of the legality of the copies is a topic for another day. One of the sub-tasks for the archival work is to scan and convert the dozen or so that I want to keep but have been unable to pirate. Converting old non-fiction will be more demanding, especially the math bits.

I know lots of people claim to prefer the feel/smell/whatever of paper. I've read too much stuff by screen over the decades to be that way. I suspect that some of the old tiny prints of pictures will be much better as digital images taken with a good macro lens than they are "live".

Semi-climate-controlled rental storage adds up to a tidy sum over years. Neither of my children have indicated any interest in taking over the material. That I've ended up with all of this says all that's necessary about other relatives. Some of it might be of interest to assorted town/county/state historical societies, but finding them is a lot of work.

For example, when I was in high school, the band director recorded events where we were the invited performers (our wind orchestra was good). He had those pressed as vinyl. I had purchased three of them, and had tucked any paper (eg, programs) that went with them in the record jackets. I ripped the vinyl, took fairly high-resolution photos of all the paper. It was painful to find any place that would take them. I did, eventually. They were the last vinyl I owned. The turntable has gone to Goodwill now.

[GftNC]

Carole Cadwalladr on much of interest:

https://open.substack.com/pub/broligarchy/p/the-dark-lord-of-silicon-valley?r=w2vx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

[wj]

It could make one think that Peter Thiel has ambitions to displace Leonard Leo and become the next eminence gris. Or perhaps he already has, and it just isn't obvious yet.

[wj]

Having cleverly made this an open thread

Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were left baffled on Monday after the head of the U.S. disaster agency said he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season,

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fema-staff-confused-after-head-said-he-was-unaware-us-hurricane-season-sources-2025-06-02/

Well, if we have magically ceased to have one, that would justify gutting FEMA now, wouldn't it?

Naturally he has fallen back on the "It was a joke" excuse.

[Michael Cain]

The GFS long-term model has spun up a hurricane in the western Caribbean about 12 days from now in each of the last few runs. Each run has had the hurricane track up through the Yucatan Channel into the Gulf, and grow it into a category 3 storm. Forecast paths after that vary wildly.

That far in the future most GFS storms turn out to be hallucinations. Not AI hallucinations... yet. But NOAA is playing with trained AI models. The Europeans already release their AI model forecast as an experimental product.

[hairshirthedonist]

The turntable has gone to Goodwill now.

Funny. I bought a turntable as a gift to the whole family this past Christmas, along with records from our local used-vinyl store.

[russell]

Naturally he has fallen back on the "It was a joke" excuse.

This administration has no gift for comedy. Not of any useful type, anyway.

I bought a turntable as a gift to the whole family this past Christmas, along with records from our local used-vinyl store.

All of our vinyl went to the hipster kids of friends a couple of years ago. Vinyl is all the rage (again)!

I miss it, because I'm one of those weirdos who insist that ANALOG SOUNDS BETTER DAMMIT, but we were on a campaign to deaccession stuff we didn't use that often. Especially bulky stuff.

So off it all went. A lot of 70's pop, some jazz, and some weird punk era stuff (Pere Ubu FTW!) that is probably disturbing the mind of some 20-something youngster out there somewhere. Hopefully in a good way.

And ANALOG SOUNDS BETTER DAMMIT is a hill I am prepared to die on, even if not to live by.

Nowadays we have it all on a big NAS and stream it with Roon.

[hairshirthedonist]

Vinyl is all the rage (again)!

I'm a late adopter even with stuff that's already retro.

[nous]

I have no emotional attachment to vinyl, but also no qualms if friends and associates prefer vinyl for whatever reasons (history, sound, feel, ritual satisfaction, etc.).

I can hear the differences. I took one of those tests to determine if the listener can really tell the difference between bitrates and fidelities, and scored 100% with my AKG K240 studio headphones on. I listen to most music streaming on Apple Music on the Hi-Res Lossless setting and appreciate it.

But I also listen to a lot of metal and other loud music that often favors a lo-fi aesthetic and is recorded in such a way that the stream being Hi-Res Lossless doesn't make a ton of difference for clarity. It all sounds like its coming from a cave in the woods.

And on the flip side, I have a 5 watt tube amp and a bunch of (primarily) analog pedals for my guitar/bass, and prefer that to the digital modeling amps I have owned in the past. Part of that is sound (warmer mids and less brittle highs), but most of it is the beauty of having something that needs no firmware updates. You turn it on and it works as intended, and it doesn't become obsolete in five years.

So I guess my aesthetic is simplicity and convenience?

[russell]

Not to completely derail this thread into a discussion of audio, but the value of analog vs digital really depends a lot on what you listen to.

You mostly get a benefit from stuff that is natural acoustic sound (classical, choral, jazz) or was recorded using analog tech (pop music up until the 80's).

Most pop music of any style from the last 40 years or so is already so non-analog that it doesn't really matter that much.

And simplicity and convenience are values not to be shunned!

[Michael Cain]

I'll simply note that the audio for every vinyl record made since the 1950s runs through an (inherently imperfect) analog filter as part of the recording process, and a corresponding (inherently imperfect) analog filter on playback. As I understand that piece of technology history, different companies had different filters and the RIAA standardized on one that human test subjects preferred in blind listening tests. (It wasn't the most accurate.)

I no longer have to worry much about the quality of audio reproduction. My ears have lost an octave off the top of their frequency range. My digital hearing aids almost certainly introduce more distortion than all but the worst audio systems. As the audiologist put it, "We're not giving you your 25-year-old hearing back; we're replacing one set of distortions with another, hopefully more useful, set."

Most of my digitizing efforts are about conserving physical space. Years ago I had to do occasional lectures about the future of computer storage. I used to hold up a 3.5" hard disk drive and say something like, "Today this disk drive, the size of a single paperback book, can hold all of the textbooks and fiction in my house. In five years, it will also be able to hold all the records and CDs. In 15 years, all of the video tapes and DVDs."

[novakant]

The best thing about vinyl were the covers and liner notes - you bought albums, they were big and you could spend ages in record stores flicking through them. Then there was something ceremonious about taking an LP out of its sleeve and putting it on the turntable.

Now "the aura" is completely lost. Take this with a grain of salt, lol, as I never read Benjamin's book, though I might give it a shot someday:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction

[nous]

novakant - Benjamin is not too difficult a slog.

I get the high church aspect of vinyl, I'm just a media Quaker.

[GftNC]

On downsizing and a (very brief) bout of rationalising, I got rid of my turntable, amplifier, and (much more difficult) made myself dispose of the enormous speakers the great love of my life (a recording engineer, among many other extraordinary skills) made for me for my 21st birthday. No real regrets, except I have a stack of vinyl which I can no longer listen to. I do have a very good quality Bose CD player from my late husband's house, and replaced many albums I couldn't live without with that format, so it's that or online now. But I am not in any sense the kind of connoisseur you all seem to be, and given that, like Michael Cain, I have lost what the audiologist called "an age-appropriate amount" of higher frequency, it has never really bothered me.

[nous]

I'm honestly surprised that I can hear the difference in audio qualities so clearly, given the number of metal shows I have been to over the years and the constant, low-grade tinnitus that goes with it. So far it seems like my hearing remains quite good across the frequencies, it's just that I have a much lower threshold for noise and volume than in the past.

One of the big reasons why I haven't been to a live show since the pandemic. I don't want to do any more damage and add to my risk of dementia.

It would take a very special show to get me back in a live venue.

[CharlesWT]

I don't listen to music. I listened quite a bit as a teenager and young adult. I could listen while doing manual tasks, driving, and anything that didn't require much thought.

Maybe it's a touch of autism. But music and other constant sounds are effective jammers to anything that requires thought, focus, and concentration like doing homework or writing code. Amped and clipped radio audio is especially bad. These days I listen to podcasts and audio books.

[GftNC]

nous, should there be a show you want to see, I would recommend earplugs. I went several years ago (maybe 20) to a gig by the Damned, and although it wasn't my kind of music I had become friendly with a couple of members of the band who had invited me. I hadn't gone to any gigs for years, so took earplugs, and was amazed to realise that I could hear everything, but at a bearable volume.

[hairshirthedonist]

Charles, I listened to Iron Maiden through headphones while doing calculus homework in high school, or at least that's the clearest memory I have of such things. Different strokes for different neuro-whatevers.

[nous]

GftNC - thanks for the thought. We've been wearing earplugs to shows for most of the time we were doing it. We had some that a sound engineer at one of the LA venues recommended to us. They were what let us keep going for as long as we did.

Despite them, though, there were shows that got to me, and a few that were past my pain threshold even with the earplugs in and 20 db of attenuation. It had started happening more often, and at lower volumes than in the past, so I decided to err on the side of caution.

And that caution is not exactly helped by how ridiculous the venue pricing has become since the pandemic.

I'm good with the decision. It goes in the pile along with the other foibles of youth that I am glad to have lived through, but not as keen on continuing.

[GftNC]

Gosh, nous, I guess that's metal! I'm sorry, but sure your decision is wise. The prices - that's the way I feel about theatre these days. It's a loss, I used to go quite often. It was one thing good about the pandemic; they filmed some of the plays I would have wanted to see, like Prima Facie with Jodie Comer - much easier with a one-hander like that, of course.

[hairshirthedonist]

I can think of metal shows I saw, probably all in the old Spectrum arena in Philly, where I left not only with my ears ringing, but disoriented from the sound levels, almost as though I was subjected to sonic weapons. Still no significant hearing problems, thankfully. I saw Napalm Death, (the) Melvins, and Weedeater about a month ago.

Perhaps there are adjustable noise-canceling earbuds you could wear, Nous, to make it to occasional, highly desirable shows.

[CharlesWT]

Disaster Area

[novakant]

I went to a Pantera concert once, more or less by accident. I lasted about 10 minutes...

[Pro Bono]

The Damned! Get you, GftNC. I've just listened to New Rose for the first time in decades.

I spend a gap year of sorts in Southampton in the late 70s. All the new bands used to play there on about the last leg of a tour before getting to London.

One gets older, then much older. I haven't been to a concert, classical music aside, this millennium. Nor can I listen to music while studying. I can do it while coding, but I tend not to because I just tune it out.

[GftNC]

Pro Bono: I know - so unlikely! When the bouncers hauled me and my sister over the barrier at the front of the mosh pit to take us backstage, they said "we hope you don't mind us saying so, but you ladies don't look like typical Damned fans"!

[russell]

I don't listen to music.

It *is* possible to just listen to music while doing... nothing else at all. As if the listening to music part is that actual thing you're doing.

Could be worth a try!

Loud bands:

Gang of Four, East Side Club, Chestnut St in Philly, New Years Eve 81-82. My ears buzzed literally for a couple of days after that show, I was afraid I'd never hear correctly again.

Nitzer Ebb, Paradise, Comm Ave in Boston, maybe 10 years ago? My niece's then-husband was the road manager for the tour and got me comps. Didn't know much about them so I went. Not just volume, but absolutely freaking massive low end, so much that it was making me nauseous and I had to leave. Plus, they had a weird fashy-adjacent vibe that I found... off-putting.

These days I just don't go to loud shows. Was born with a congenital hearing deficiency, made worse by age and drumming. Actually lost several db of sensitivity in my right ear about a year ago while working on some drum stuff without ear protection (aka being an utter dumbass). I've stepped away from a couple of musical projects over the last year because the bands were just too damned loud.

Nowadays I'm mostly focused on playing jazz on the vibes (which are still a pretty loud instrument, so I wear good earplugs while practicing). That is a very tall hill to climb, and it will probably take me 2 or 3 years of pretty hard work to get competent enough to play with other people. I realized I need to add some kind of "easy win" (relatively speaking) to the musical mix to balance the frustration factor, so I'm about to start digging into frame drums, working from some video tutorials by the late great Layne Redmond.

Also want to get into the traditional Zimbabwean mbira literature on marimba, which has a relatively low barrier to entry (although a lifetime to really master it).

There are all kinds of ways you can FUBAR your hearing, but exposure to loud sounds is probably the worst, because it basically kills the nerves in your middle ear. And when they're gone, they do not come back.

The folks that play loud music live generally wear in-ear monitors, which shut out the ambient live sound and pipe a monitor mix directly to the performers ears, at a reasonable volume. Either that, or they go deaf by the time they're 45. It's an occupational hazard.

Take it from me kids - don't be like uncle russell!! if you're gonna listen to music, protect your ears!!

[russell]

But wait, I'm not done talking!!

Folks with attention issues (for instance, me, but not just me) often find that trance music is a great companion for coding or similar kinds of tasks requiring mental focus. There's just enough information there to give your restless monkey brain something to entertain itself with, kind of on autopilot, while your deeper thought processes can engage with the material at hand.

Could be a brain wave entrainment thing going on there too, but not having an EEG monitor handy, I can't say for sure.

[CharlesWT]

It *is* possible to just listen to music while doing... nothing else at all.

I like hearing music from my teenage and young adult years due to its pleasant familiarity and connotations, but not enough to make an effort to find and listen to it. At my age, I should listen to all those 60s—80s songs at least one last time.

I have a fondness for Joan Baez's Leaving on a Jetplane. I would play it in my head as I did the boot camp three-mile runs on a track that paralleled a takeoff runway of the San Diego airport. I really wished I was on one of those jetplanes.

[JanieM]

Fun conversation about music.

CharlesWT: If Joan Baez ever recorded Leaving on a Jet Plane, I don't remember it and can't find any evidence of it online. Maybe you're thinking of Peter Paul and Joan? ;-)

Which is a little joke based on the clip of Judith Durham starting at 16:45 of this concert video. They do play a snippet of Leaving on a Jet Plane at the end of the medley that follows.

[JanieM]

No! That's wrong! It's Puff the Magic Dragon that they play.

I shouldn't comment until I'm properly caffeinated. Maybe not even then....

The joke still holds, though. ;-)

[nous]

Nitzer Ebb, Paradise, Comm Ave in Boston, maybe 10 years ago? My niece's then-husband was the road manager for the tour and got me comps. Didn't know much about them so I went. Not just volume, but absolutely freaking massive low end, so much that it was making me nauseous and I had to leave. Plus, they had a weird fashy-adjacent vibe that I found... off-putting.

I've seen them live as well.

About their vibe... I can understand the discomfort for a contemporary audience. It was a product of a particular historical context. Industrial/EBM was Cold War technological dance music, and Nitzer Ebb were young working class men in Thatcher's UK. It was a very repressive atmosphere, and one of the responses to that was the development of a Totalitarian Camp aesthetic. It fit in with what a lot of other EBM groups were doing as a sort of performance art protest against Cold War politics. You can see bits of that spread across most of the bands in the scene, and it was well understood by the anti-racist goth/punk/industrial tribe of the day, and also by the racist skinheads who knew they were being lampooned whenever a bunch of gay punks packed out a dancefloor for "Join in the Chant" while shouting "muscle and hate" along with the music. It was all meant to be a subversive take on fascism and the authoritarian technophilia of The Futurist Manifesto. It has the same vibe that 2000 AD magazine tapped into.

That vibe doesn't play well with the more on-the-nose vibe of today's anti-racist, anti-fascist groups. It's too ironic and too Gen X in its roughness and messiness and ambiguity.

[Hartmut]

Meanwhile at the Pentagon:
Pete Hegseth ordererd the renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk named after the gay politician and civil rights activist.
That was yesterday. Today I read that ALL ships of its class (The John Lewis class of fleet oilers) are destined for renaming. They are all named after persons important in the civil rights movement and it is generally assumed that this action is part of the anti-DEI crusade.
Milk served in the armed forces and got an honorable discharge long before his sexual orientation became known, so the argument does not fly that this is about not naming ships after persons with no military connections.
Will they erase the names of blue states and blue cities next from the list of navy vessels?

[GftNC]

The pettiness and performative cruelty is absolutely disgusting.

[russell]

Pete Hegseth ordererd the renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk named after the gay politician and civil rights activist.

Maybe they could name it the U.S.S. Tom of Finland. That should meet Hegseth's standard for macho manliness! ;)

Also, nous, thanks for the Nitzer Ebb context. That all makes sense. I used to experience a similar sense of apprehension around skins - I wasn't really all the hip to the details, and found it hard to distinguish between the skins who would kick the shit out of me, and the skins who would kick the shit out of the skins who would kick the shit out of me.

Is this irony, or the real thing? Kind of a IRL version of Poe's Law.

[CharlesWT]

Milk served in the armed forces and got an honorable discharge long before his sexual orientation became known,

He didn't get an honorable discharge.

"At some point, although his record does not indicate when, the Navy discovered that Milk was homosexual. He was confronted in December 1954 about participating in a “homosexual act” in 1953, and upon questioning admitted to having several more liaisons with men.

Like many gay men in the military at this time, he was forced out of service. He was told that if he did not voluntarily resign from the Navy Reserve, accepting an “Other Than Honorable” discharge and giving up on any military benefits he would otherwise have been entitled to, he would be court-martialed. Milk opted to willingly resign, and in January 1955 was discharged from the military. "
Harvey Milk: Veteran

[Hartmut]

These guys should naturally be on the short list for replacing the DEI ship names:
Appropriately the ship class type is USNS

Henry Wirz
Joseph McCarthy
Matthew Hopkins
Roger B. Taney
Bull Connor
Cecil Price
Wiliam Calley
John Chivington
William Dudley Pelley
Charles Coughlin

[Hartmut]

Re: CharlesWT 03:59PM
Oh, then the first report I got on this was obviously wrong (it explicilty stated it was an honorable discharge).

[hairshirthedonist]

Joan Denver?

[JanieM]

hsh: lol....

[CharlesWT]

In 2021, the Navy made efforts to posthumously upgrade Milk's discharge but was rebuffed by Milk's family members.

[wonkie]

Change of subject, for anyone interested.

I read an article about a family that self-deported to stay together with the father who had been arrested and sent to Colombia. The wife had voted for Trump the first time but not the second time. She lived surrounded by Trumpers who loved her family--elderly neighbors more or less adopted their kids, they were on friendly chatting terms with everyone on their block and so on.
All the Trump neighbors are upset about the husband being deported. But that's not really what got me thinking.
I began wondering if life in Colombia might be better than here. There's no question that their health care system is better. That's sad and funny--deported to a place with better health care! I don't know what schools or housing are like. There are outbreaks of progressive actions in Colombia.
https://colombiaone.com/2025/03/30/medellin-planting-trees/

On the other hand overall quality of life is lower than the global average: https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/colombia/

And the family will have to learn Spanish.

Still, it could be worse: Haiti, for example.

I don't know what my point is. I am certainly not trying to justify or mitigate the horribleness of interrupting this family's American Dream. I hope they find a reasonable quality of life in Colombia.

[CaseyL]

wonkie - Ordinary daily life in the US has been qualitatively worse than in Europe and Oceania for quite some time now.

Lately, like you, I've been wondering if life in the US is going to devolve to the point that life in almost any developed/industrialized nation is better.

[liberal japonicus]

In 2021, the Navy made efforts to posthumously upgrade Milk's discharge but was rebuffed by Milk's family members

Interesting phrasing. checking Cambridge, rebuff is "to refuse to accept a helpful suggestion or offer from someone, often by answering in an unfriendly way"

from
https://www.marineinsight.com/shipping-news/us-navy-to-rename-ship-honouring-gay-rights-activist-harvey-milk/

His nephew, Stuart Milk, declined the Navy’s offer to upgrade Harvey’s discharge in 2021 to preserve the historical record of discrimination against LGBTQ service members.

Now, maybe Stuart Milk told the Navy to go f**k themselves, but given that the family approved the naming of the ship in 2016, 'rebuff' tells us more about the attitudes of the person's making the statement than the actual historical record.

[Pro Bono]

This BBC video reports on blatant lying by the White House Press Secretary, about the BBC's coverage of Gaza. Trump's minions don't care if what they say is provably false.

[Pete]

I think I still have a working record player around here somewhere. Yeah. Record player. None of this fancy "turntable" bullshit. "Big Band Bash III". On vinyl. Pretty sure my trumpet was flat which only added to the miserable cacophony that was "Proud Mary". We had Wayfarers and matching shirts. We were cool. We were in 7th grade. We were terrible and I apologize to all who witnessed it.

I will be cremated with it. And Mom's copy of "Meet The Beatles", Dad's "Whipped Cream and Other Delights" and a 45 of "Ghost Riders in the Sky".

[novakant]

Did you mean this video, Pro Bono?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c9wgq9vv51do

It's of course a deliberate tactic, just like with climate change: as long as you can sow enough doubt to construct a "fair and balanced, both sides, some say" narrative in people's minds, you've won.

[Pro Bono]

Thanks novokant, that's the one. (If someone with the power to do it takes the trouble to fix my link, thank you.)

I understand that they lie as easily as they breathe. But, naïvely, I expect them to restrict themselves to lies where they can create some sort of doubt about the facts.

[GftNC]

Not only do they lie as easily as they breathe, but in the same press conference they reveal the truth inadvertently:

In response to whether he has any evidence that anything specific was signed without Joe Biden’s knowledge during Biden’s presidency, Donald Trump said:

“I don’t think Biden would know whether or not he signed it.”

*****

In response to a question about whether he is allowing Chinese students into the US, Donald Trump said:

"Chinese students are coming. No problem, no problem. It’s our honor to have them. Frankly, we want to have foreign students, but we want them to be checked."

Trump’s response follows just days after the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced that the US will “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese students studying at US universities.

[hairshirthedonist]

I'm enjoying some bit of schadenfreude while reading about tRump's and ElMu's escalating spat. They can do their worst, so long as it's aimed at each other. Find the joy where you can, right?

[GftNC]

Life is hard and then you die, but still there can be sparks of amusement and enjoyment. The Elon Musk/Donald Trump social media spat gets more and more entertaining, what with Musk threatening the revelation of DJT's inclusion in the Epstein files, and Trump saying he did a lot for Elon, and Elon saying that without him Trump wouldn't have won the election, and Trump saying that nobody wanted electric cars anyway, and on and on.

Both of them are, of course, fiddling while Rome burns, but still, you've got to get your laughs where you can.

[GftNC]

Beaten to it by hsh! Great minds think alike.

[Donald]

It’s sad to see a great bromance fall apart like that. I can’t understand why I am snickering so much.

[liberal japonicus]

I'm enjoying some bit of schadenfreude while reading about tRump's and ElMu's escalating spat.

The chef's kiss for me is Elon and Steven Miller's wife

https://www.thecut.com/article/who-is-katie-miller-elon-musk-doge-drama-explained.html

As they sometimes say, "Inappropriate to speculate? It's inappropriate _not_ to!"

I'm also quite interested in how all these stories about Elon have started to pour out of the woodwork.

[GftNC]

I read about Katie Miller's leaving to work for Musk a few days ago. I have to admit that my first reaction was amazement that any woman had married the (in every possible way) absolutely repulsive Stephen Miller. I must say that it never occurred to me that that situation could have had any influence on this Ubu/Skummy (h/t Janie) breakup, and since everyone has been predicting since the beginning that the bromance would come to a bad end, I'm not sure that it has. I see from X that Skummy is reposting things that say he didn't personally go for Trump first, just the bill. So we shall see what we shall see. Meanwhile, it has to be a gift to the Dems, doesn't it?

[liberal japonicus]

A lot of this reporting is coming from non-US papers, the Daily Beast is the only one I see pointing to it. If that is the case, it is interesting what triggers restraint.

[JanieM]

A lot of this reporting is coming from non-US papers, the Daily Beast is the only one I see pointing to it.

I don't follow a lot of news sites directly, but the CLickbait-Skummy feud is all over the front page of nbcnews.com tonight....

[liberal japonicus]

Hi Janie, I meant the Miller (I think it was an LGM post that called him 'naziferatu') and the Tesla Tinpot. My impression is that it hasn't gotten much play in the US, which is understandable, there is often a looking away when a conservative does something cringy (I was just thinking about how iirc, George Will's 1st wife put all of his stuff on the yard when he got caught having an affair with his 2nd wife.)

[hairshirthedonist]

Beaten to it by hsh! Great minds think alike.

And so do we! ;^)

[hairshirthedonist]

The bad news is that Steve Bannon is now speaking on the subject on NPR. Yeah, let's give the dark lord of Fascism 2.0 some airtime.

[GftNC]

Last I heard (yesterday), Bannon was saying Musk is an illegal alien and should be deported. But given the mild placatory moves made (on both sides?) today, plus the realisation that the space station depends on SpaceX, I guess this whole thing might be somewhat de-escalated for the moment. And if they become convinced how dangerous it is to rely so heavily on an interfering, independent sole provider, that would also be a good thing.

[GftNC]

Whoops - info radically out of date apparently! It looks like this one is continuing to run, and I can't say I'm sorry.

[Michael Cain]

Yesterday as part of the spat, Trump threatened to cancel SpaceX's government contracts, and Musk counter-threatened to immediately decommission the Dragon capsule. SpaceX is the only launch provider with an available rocket certified for NASA and national security high-value payloads. SpaceX is the only launch provider other than the Russians certified to fly crew to the ISS (and is, I believe, temporarily the only provider other than the Russians to fly cargo to the ISS).

Today Musk retracted his side of the threat. I suspect he spoke with Gwynne Shotwell, the COO who actually built SpaceX into the launch power that it is today. This would not be the first time Shotwell has told Musk to shut up and quit messing with the government contracts she needs to finance the company's R&D efforts.

[Michael Cain]

And if they become convinced how dangerous it is to rely so heavily on an interfering, independent sole provider, that would also be a good thing.

The problem is that no one else has been able to accomplish what SpaceX has despite being given comparable amounts of money. ULA's Vulcan is certified now (at least for DOD) but ULA can't produce them at a rate to meet even their current contracts. Bezos' New Glenn has only flown once and appears to have the same problems with production rate. Boeing's Starliner capsule project is a nightmare. Yesterday, NASA announced the next flight for Starliner will be no earlier than 2026, and would not say whether there would be a crew. Given the two-year interval since the last flight, I interpret that statement as "Hell, no, there won't be a crew," and think it likely Boeing will abandon the project. NASA is committed to deorbit the ISS in 2031, and awarded the contract to SpaceX. Rumor, at least, is that no one else had a proposal that met the schedule. Having watched Gwynne Shotwell over the years, it seems to me almost a certain thing that she has a variety of revenue-generating activities in mind for the "tug" version of Dragon that NASA will be paying her to develop.

[GftNC]

Very hard to forgive the Epstein jibe, I would suppose. And of course, Musk has form where that is concerned, he called the guy who actually did the cave rescue of the marooned kids in Thailand, who had scornfully rejected Musk's offer of a special mini sub saying it wouldn't help, a "pedo guy", and then when the guy sued for slander (or libel, I forget), Musk got away with claiming it was just an all-purpose insult in South Africa, and escaped any penalty. Truly, drugs or no drugs, Asperger's or no, he is a prince among men.

[GftNC]

Mind you, knowing Ubu, I would imagine that the jibe he minds most is the one that said he wouldn't have won the election without Skummy. That one would have really hit him where it hurt.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"Musk got away with claiming it was just an all-purpose insult in South Africa, and escaped any penalty"

So, I guess we can just "necklace" Musk, since it's an all-purpose punishment in South Africa.

[GftNC]

Michelle Goldberg in today's NYT makes the excellent point about how Musk et al have helped usher in a regime in which anybody who annoys the president is at risk, including them and their businesses, unlike in previous periods of American democracy. Hammering home the point:

Nevertheless, the last 24 hours should be a lesson to both him and all the other billionaires who lined up with Trump. In trying to liberate themselves from regulation, they’ve trapped themselves in a posture of deep, even existential submission. When the rule of law gives way to the cult of the leader, there are lots of opportunities for personal enrichment, but only for those who stay in the leader’s good graces.

“Americans tend to think that being rich makes you powerful,” the political scientist Jeffrey Kopstein, co-author of “The Assault on the State,” told me recently. “In fact, what the Trump era is showing is that being powerful makes you rich.”

In the world Musk and his Silicon Valley allies have helped usher in, supplication is as important for major entrepreneurs as innovation. Musk, perhaps, deserves to have to live in this world. The rest of us don’t.

[wj]

The folks who supported Trump because they disliked regulation are discovering the obvious.

With regulations, you know what the rules are. Regulations do change, but relatively slowly, and almost always with time alloted to allow those impacted to adjust. They also lay out relatively clear sanctions for noncompliance.

Instead of that, they now have a situation where the rules can change from day to day; sometimes from hour to hour. Instant compliance is demanded -- notwithstanding the detail that the proclamations are routinely vague, contradictory, or just incomprehensible. The penalties seem to be made up entirely on the fly. Oh yes, and sometimes applied ex post facto in response to someone having done what they were legally required to do at the time.

They bought the bridge. If it weren't for how many others are getting hurt, I would wish them joy of it.

[GftNC]

Percival Everett's commencement speech at Wesleyan:

Congratulations. I would like to thank all of you for allowing me to be a part of this celebration. I'm not known for my love of parties, but this is pretty cool. I have long admired Wesleyan, and I am an admirer of President Roth. I offer special thanks to him for this opportunity and honor.

Art and history are always evolving. As in the sciences, the more we learn, the more our perception of knowledge and our world changes. People stand up on these occasions and talk about the hope that graduates like yourselves represent. You will hear that you are the promise for our culture, that you are our future. This is all true, cliché of course, but no less true for that fact. Given the state of our country, you are more than a mere promise. You might well be the last line of defense of and for American intellectual life. There are those among us who would not rewrite history, but erase it, who would not challenge science with science, but replace it with fear and opinion, who would not champion charity and generosity for any reason except profit and/or public perception. These are not our enemies, and we should not give them power by seeing them as such. They are a disease in our world, one that will be cured by education and by intellectual standards taught and maintained in places such as this.

I was lucky to grow up with a grandfather and a father who were doctors who read novels, who listened to music, who enjoyed paintings. I learned from them that truth resides in the art that a culture makes. If you want to understand a culture, you look at the art it produces. To understand the art, you don't look at the artists, you look at the audience. It is the audience, the readers, listeners, viewers who make all the meaning to be found in art. And art is more expansive in definition than one might think. Science is art. Mathematics is art. None of these practices grow and change without the same creativity that creates symphonies and jazz and sculpture and novels.

We are faced with forces that would limit our educations, that would curtail our ability to discuss and examine and dismantle ideas without fear. These forces are opposed to intellectual pursuits, opposed to challenges to the status quo. They would monetize everything if they could. They are afraid of you, all of you. There is a reason that fascists burn books. They are afraid of critical thinking. They are afraid of thought. What you have learned here at Wesleyan is how to read. That is no small thing. Your reading is not confined to the page. You have learned to read the world, people, actions, conspiracies. You have learned to think for yourselves.

Reading is the most subversive thing you can do. When you read, no one knows what's going into you, even if they are reading over your shoulder, and they are. The second most subversive thing is not writing; that's a distant third. The second is belonging to a book club or being in a classroom. None of you have ever been indoctrinated by a good teacher. You have learned to resist indoctrination, you have learned to be critical and properly skeptical. This life of the mind that has been opened to you will make your life richer, will allow you to grow, and, my hope, will allow you to challenge the anti-intellectual elements that have taken root and attempt to use fear to silence those who think. I ask nothing more from you than to do what you have been doing. Go out into the fray and keep reading.