"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
by liberal japonicus I had scheduled this earlier, but ended up publishing it with the former Oct date, so maybe folks didn’t see it. Or maybe they did and thought it was so trivial as to pass uncommented on. But anyhoo… I don’t know if you all are up on the Squid Game, but one … Read more
by liberal japonicus At the likely possibility of reducing this dead horse to free-floating horse molecules, consider this https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/05/house-democrats-infrastructure-vote-wait-megabill-519731 Politico is pretty egregious on the whole moderate thing, but that’s not what caught my eye, it was the controposing use of the term of ‘liberal’. I don’t know if it is progress but after a … Read more
by liberal japonicus Missed getting something up last friday. So how about spotted skunks? Or other fun animals? A spray and pray thread. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/spotted-skunk
by liberal japonicus Couple of links for you https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/butterflies-parasitic-wasps-finland https://www.npr.org/2021/10/11/1045084704/an-invasive-plant-is-taking-over-the-kansas-prairie-it-may-be-too-late-to-stop-i But that’s plants you say Scientists Built an AI to Give Ethical Advice, But It Turned Out Super Racist A bit of opining here, Something to consider when people suggest that we can just science our way out of climate change. But open thread, so … Read more
Meet the Toaloans, not to be confused with the Talosians. Discuss.
by liberal japonicus An interesting article about mindreading and its relation to a theory of the mind. In one of those ‘papers I want to write but will probably never get around to’, I wanted to make the argument that teaching students, Japanese student in particular, how to lie was a key component of communicative … Read more
by liberal japonicus In the red corner, all the way from Mother Russia, the killer with Karenina, he knows war and he knows peace, Leeeeeooooooo Tolstoy! And in the blue corner, the champion, the man coming to bury you, not praise you, from that scepter’d isel, Willlllllll Shakespeare!!! Are you ready to rumble??? https://bigthink.com/high-culture/tolstoy-shakespeare/
by liberal japonicus
I’m pretty cynical, I think by nature, but I also believe that we are bathed in it, so even if I were the most optimistic on the planet (which I am not), getting pickled in it has the expected effect. But a bit of cheer below the fold.
by wj It seems that there are several places around the country which are actually trying out variations on the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI), to see how it works in the real world. https://usbig.net/state-level-ubi-and-guaranteed-income-initiatives-in-the-u-s/ We may, in the not too distant future, have something besides theory on which to evaluate the idea. (Actual … Read more
by liberal japonicus From The Guardian Pinker’s progress: the celebrity scientist at the centre of the culture wars He has twice been a guest at Bohemian Grove, which has been described as an off-the-record summer camp for male members of the American establishment. Discuss.
by liberal japonicus We’ve talked about this a bit here, so a discussion on where things are moving in Minneapolis https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/22/minneapolis-reckoning-defund-the-police-513568 This, from this link is interesting. The amendment went through the city’s Charter Commission, who are appointed by the chief judge in Hennepin County. At the Minneapolis City Council, city staff tried to attach … Read more
by liberal japonicus This article https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/25/california-latino-voters-democrats-gavin-newsom-recall About 30% of California’s registered voters are Latino, and it appears they voted largely Democrat – but some say it was ‘about ensuring this state didn’t move backward’ and this one https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-pushes-racist-great-replacement-theory-yet-again-adl-renews-call-for-fox-to-fire-him The Fox News host has repeatedly fear-mongered about Democrats allegedly bringing in dark-skinned immigrants with the express … Read more
by liberal japonicus I feel like posting this in the open thread would be a bit of a U-turn, and I wanted a ever-so slightly more focussed thread. And I had forgotten all about this. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/09/22/chaos-and-drama-new-report-sheds-light-what-went-wrong-aboard-navys-covid-stricken-carrier.html There was a comment about how, with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US military should be pivoting to a … Read more
by liberal japonicus I love this stuff https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/08/indigenous-americans-polynesians-dna-800-years-ago https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/22/genetics-reveal-how-humans-island-hopped-to-settle-remote-pacific
by liberal japonicus An interesting piece about the various frames in the decision to shelve the military’s DADT policy. https://inkstickmedia.com/transcending-a-readiness-frame-for-lgbtq-rights-in-the-military/ Driving the repeal forward with a readiness frame was a huge success. The day the repeal was implemented there was an enormous lifting of weight off the shoulders of LGB military personnel. However, downplaying the … Read more
by liberal japonicus Hope I don’t insult everyone by suggesting that there may be a lot of people here who are bibliophiles. So, an article. https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2021/09/why-are-ebooks-so-terrible/620068/ I’ve got some thoughts, but the lamp is lit.
by liberal japonicus The New Thermodynamic Understanding of Clocks Don’t let the title chase you off, really interesting article.
by liberal japonicus This Guardian long read is interesting. Such obstacles made the ship an off-putting proposition for insurers. No one would agree to cover them. “They wouldn’t even tell us why we weren’t insurable, they just kept saying no,” Romundt said. “It’s kind of hard to remedy something if you don’t know what the … Read more
by liberal japonicus Some may have noted that two threads were temporarily closed. This was done in part because of some private knowledge that GftNC was going through, and will be going through for the whole month of September, a particularly difficult time. She’s told me that she will almost certainly not be replying to … Read more
by wj I came across this TED talk on how language shapes how we think. https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think/up-next The speaker is mostly talking about how different languages shape our perception. How a language which doesn’t use “right” and “left”, but rather gives cardinal directions (even for which hand you are talking about), will make people much more … Read more
by liberal japonicus Not my best title, but whatever. Tons of things to link to out there, here are a few of them John Roberts has lost control of the Supreme Court The Scotus also has the relatively mild mannered Josh Marshall sounding like he wants to storm the Bastille SCOTUS Delenda Est Reminiscent of … Read more
by liberal japonicus A week or two ago, this article was posted by CharlesWT about the word that made the play MacBeth so creepy. Nous observed the following Brief response to CharlesWT’s Macbeth article, I think the reason why the number crunching quant side of literary analysis meets resistance is mostly because the data results … Read more
by liberal japonicus Tossing out another quasi open thread. My FB has a number of Canuck friends getting their ballots in the mail. Here’s the WaPo article on it. Anyone want to talk about this? I do have a joke that I heard that seems apropos. One Mexican was speaking to a compatriot and said … Read more
by liberal japonicus I don’t know what everyone saw of the Olympics. Here in Japan, it was very much contested, seemed very Japanese, as if the country put on a show for the rest of the world, but no one came。 This is a wonderful article about Yu Miri and the Olympics by Miles Osgood. … Read more
by liberal japonicus Since I’ve been found out, I figure I should just fly my hammer and sickle flag. Debout, les damnés de la terre!! But naturally, the Japanese flavor of Marxism tastes a bit different…. https://palladiummag.com/2021/08/20/the-school-that-built-asia/ But during its lifetime, the Japanese colony was a highly unusual exercise in the history of imperialism. The … Read more
by liberal japonicus This op-ed from the South China Morning Post might give something to talk about. The piece is actually quite interesting, contrasting the glee expressed by various Chinese sources and the nervousness of a potential flash point with the Uighurs that could arise. A lot of Western media have accused the outlet of … Read more
by liberal japonicus As I mentioned earlier in a comment, I was going to go back to posting a Friday open thread. I’m not sure why I stopped, but maybe it was just was too mechanical to post ‘This is an open thread’ without doing anything else. It was obviously too easy for me to … Read more
by wj It feels like we are overdue for another Open Thread. So here are a couple of totally unrelated items to kick it off. First, it appears that a Texas school district may have found a possible way around idiot governors who want to ban mask mandates: dress codes!!! https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/08/18/texas-masks-paris-dresscode-abbott/ Authority over these seems … Read more
by liberal japonicus A flurry of new discoveries at Göbekli Tepe https://www.archaeology.org/issues/422-2105/features/9591-turkey-gobekli-tepe-hunter-gatherers https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210815-an-immense-mystery-older-than-stonehenge Amazing stuff
by liberal japonicus There are a ton of articles, so any list is going to suffer from selection bias. This 1-2 punch from LGM sums up my feelings Dan Nexon‘s take concludes with Events in Afghanistan do not necessarily provide retrospective justification for a continued presence there or buttress future arguments for U.S. intervention, military … Read more
by wj Here in California, we are having a recall election for our Governor. Why? After all, it’s not like the mess with Cuomo in New York. Well, today the official Voter Information Guide with Sample Ballot arrived in the mail. The official reason: Governor Newsom has implemented laws which are detrimental to the citizens … Read more
by liberal japonicus Lest it be felt that we are ganging up on one person, I post this for our favorite libertarian Jeffrey Clark, the highest-ranking DOJ official who tried to install Donald Trump as dictator, has been rewarded with a nice sinecure with a prominent libertarian litigation group The NCLA is not a fringe … Read more
by JanieM By special request! Whatever on earth you can think of to talk about…………….
by liberal japonicus
I have a ton of work, which obviously means the gods are asking me to procrastinate. The question of how a competition should work is a fascinating one to me, and I think looking at how things look from a Japanese perspective might be interesting. The lens I want to use is Judo. More below the break. A ton of video links in it, and I may have miscopied one or two, so if you are masochistic enough to look at all the videos and you see one that is wrong, let me know.
by wj (We’re way overdue for a new Open Thread. So here it is.) Earlier this week, I saw a number of articles commemorating the 75 wedding anniversary of Jimmy and Roseland Carter. Which put me in mind of what Carter’s legacy will likely be. He was, to my mind, an average President. (Or, if … Read more