State of the Discussion

Oh my God, the surprise of seeing your own video explanation, russell! I wish you could have seen my smile of pleasure and delight to see you and hear you sounding as cool, knowledgeable and just plain nice as you do in writing! Thank you! And I have just watched, also with great pleasure, the Rumba en Atares guaguanco video too, what a mood enhancer. I'm going to hold off on watching the rest because I'm pretty flu-ridden, and need to go lie down, but I'm on for it tomorrow.

On the Robert Palmer piece I searched for lj, I definitely did as thorough a search as I could. But on the other hand, I also definitely have limited ability in these kinds of things (as I have proved to myself many times), so somebody else with an NYT sub (or more advanced google-fu) might do better. I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

hey all, how do I register with this blog? I have a Friday music post but can't login, I don't think I ever registered. I found the login information LJ sent way back in September but it doesn't seem to work

And so, I am sad. :(

Thank you!

Thank you all for the information and suggestions.

I suppose you could say I'm at least somewhat into this stuff. Since I'm undertaking to produce a scroll which is in that mode, albeit with very different content. I've done such in the past, but I'm seriously out of practice. Like three decades out of practice. So I need all the help I can get.

wj, if you're into this type of thing don't miss out on the Chester Beatty museum and library. Among many other artefacts, they have a lot of ancient books, illustrations and manuscripts. Incidentally, they have an exhibition on "Manuscripts and the Mind" at the moment:

https://chesterbeatty.ie/exhibitions/manuscripts-and-the-mind/

ps You can see every page of the Book of Kells in high res in TCD's Digital Collection - i can't remember where I learnt this years ago, but it might well have been here!

I love the book of Kells! Did you see the Long Room? It's the platonic ideal...I'm down with a very grim flu, so nothing interesting to report I'm afraid.

i'm working on a program to automate the application of large collection of image effects i've written over the years (mostly back when i had a software business). i've called the program "Director", as in "movie director" and it's based around the metaphor of shooting a movie.

there's a Script (JSON) which describes the Cast (a list of Actors (an effect) and the name of their roles (nickname, for easier typing)), and some production info (where to get source images, etc). then, there's a list of Scenes. a Scene is a list of Actors and the Actions they take (turn on/off, change a parameter, etc.) at a given frame in the video.

run it and it reads source frames, applies effects, displays them and saves them.

the Script is just text, so it's not very sexy. but, it does work. the application as a whole is very close to being elegant, internally, which pleases me greatly.

i plan to use it to create videos for songs.

now i just need to write some songs.

Did you go with the iphone 17? For me, the battery is the key driver of a new phone, and the current phone I have is a 13, and my wife and I will probably get a 17 now. I realize that it is not just the battery, chip and phone design makes a huge difference, but it's surprising to me that the models cycle thru without much improvement, so I can't imagine just going up one or 2 model numbers

I think we should take all their money and use it for education, infrastructure and health care.

It's all a big scam and at the root of the class society which is detrimental to the nation's psyche. (And it's not only them: look at the Duke of Westminster etc.)

Ya know, it was really handy to be able to preview comments. Just to keep control over italics.

At least in my browser, the comment edit box properly shows me all of the text formatting. Preview would seem to be redundant, at least for that purpose.

I spent the entire time my we watched "Downton Abbey" annoying my wife by yelling at the Crawley's to learn how to put on their own damned clothes. So I'm probably not the person most likely to have a positive opinion of the royal family.

All of that said, from this side of the pond the UK royals seem to have this weird dichotomony between the ones who are actually king or queen (or in line to be), and who seem to take the responsibilities of their office seriously, and the rest of the family, who end up having too much money and privilege and not enough to do so they end up behaving badly.

Over here, we've had Billy Beer, the wild and crazy Bush twins, Hunter Biden, and Uday and Qusay Trump. So I'm not sure we're in a position to point fingers.

If it's working for you all, carry on. Seems expensive, though. And they should all learn to put on their own clothes.

wj, I seem to have mastered the italics and bold thing: you put your text in as normal, then highlight whichever text you want to alter, and then press the relevant button along the bottom. And then you exit the text and it lasts.

The writer’s thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president’s role more that of a policy wonk.

Perhaps a better, i.e. less contentious, way to put this is: There are advantages to separating the job of head of state from the job of head of government. One spends most of his time on ceremonial functions. The other spends most of his time managing the executive branch of the (typically national) government. (Not to say that there might be something to be said for taking the same principle down to the state/province/region level.)

The first question someone proposing such a system needs to answer is: How do you pick those two people? In Britain, for example, the chief of state, the monarch, is a hereditary position, while the head of government is (indirectly**) elected. My impression is that the other (nominal) monarchies in Europe do something similar. There are doubtless other approaches, but I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable in the field to know of examples.

And this leads to the question for Britain, if they decide to abolish their monarchy: How do you choose a new chief of state going forward? I mean, you could just dump the necessary tasks in the PM. But have recent ones really demonstrated that they have the bandwidth to take in the additional work?

** It would be rude for someone from outside to describe the method as a kludge. Which is why I resisted the temptation.

I know it's silly, but I'm one of those Americans who watches the royal family soap opera. I remember reading an opinion column years ago during the Reagan admin. The writer's thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president's role more that of a policy wonk.
Anyway, why to I read about the monarchy and have thoughts about the members? Escapism, I think. It is a digression from thinking about real problems.

My impression was that British support for the monarchy has been based, for most of her lifetime, on support for Queen Elizabeth herself. King Charles simply doesn't have that lifetime establishment of support. So he is forced (I have no idea if he recognizes it or not) to act in ways, and in circumstances, that his mother never had to worry about.

In the specific case of Andrew, it looks (from across the pond and across a continent in addition) like the Crown is going to have to throw him under the bus -- whatever that amounts to in detail. Which is probably what he deserves, but isn't going to be easy for his brother. And, if Andrew's past behavior ends up taking down the monarchy, the fiddling details will likely take years, if not decades, to sort out.

It's true that there are undoubtedly a lot of other people, especially but not exclusively in the US, who interacted with Epstein and who deserve the same. Whether they, too, will get what they deserve depends on how many names get named, and with what kind of details.

The contortions that our House Speaker is going thru, and the amount of damage he (or Trump) is willing accept, in order to avoid making the "Epstein Files" public suggest that there is a whole lot of there there. We live in interesting times.

I live in north central Texas, and I never see anything like that [Confederate flag flying off the back of a pickup].

Would that suggest that the whole point of flying those Confederate flags isn't about the Confederacy? Rather it's about "owning the libs". Thus there is no point to doing it in north central Texas -- there aren't enough liberals there to make it worth the effort.

This takes me back to 1977, the year of the queen's silver jubilee (the 25th year of her reign). There was much love shown for the monarchy, and a leftist reaction to it: I had a "Stuff the Jubilee" poster on my wall. The Sex Pistols released God Save the Queen, which would have been number 1 in the UK charts during the Jubilee week, had the charts not been blatantly fixed.

My impression is that there's now less strong feeling either way. Today's royal family is seen largely as a soap opera: naturally there's a black sheep in it.

The problem with monarchy according to Lewis Carroll:

"Off with their heads, said the Queen."

The problem with democracy according to Walt Kelly:

"Yep son, we have met the enemy and he is us."

As a point of contrast, Germany post WWII was able to move past Naziism – to not continually be engaged in arguments about it (I think – right Helmut?) – by owning it, recognizing it as toxic and a point of shame, and making explicit choices to reject it. Until AfD I guess.

a) no one in 1945 could come up with the idea that Germany had not totally lost (unlike 1918 when all fronts were still outside the Reich's borders and the population did not know that the Western allies would completely overrun them in the spring).
b) The Allies (in both West and East) allowed the broad majority of Nazis to get off lightly while at the same time making clear that this would change should they try to revive the Reich. And they kept that ultimate control long enough for everyone to get used to the new and improved democracy (which was accompanied by the 'economic miracle', giving it a huge boost).
c) it took decades (until the late 60ies) and a new generation to really come to terms with the true evil of Nazism. But (see above) the country was provided that time and was protected from anything like the Lost Cause poison.

Maybe, if Sherman had gotten his way and reconstruction had not ended by probably the dirtiest of all cow trades in US history (Andrew Johnson making a deal with the South to save his hide), there could have been something similar in the US.

Personally I think that the AfD is to a large degree a result of the fake enforced anti-fascism of the GDR. Botching the reconstruction of the East after the reunification (a good deal of disaster capitalism happened there plus - at least perceived - large scale carpetbaggery) gave it fertilizer. And now the weed grows all over the country, having surpassed a critical mass. No idea where it will end. Imo most adherents have not lived through the actual GDR (let alone the 3rd Reich) and got infected by a certain made-up nostalgia with no personal experience what an authoritarian regime actually looks and feels like.

by this point, no decent person would sign up to be anywhere near Trump. working for him means you run the risk of destroying your career by either having to lie for him or by getting a face full of MAGA hatred by refusing to lie for him.

that leaves utter idiots and cynical grifters who think they can ride the Fox/MAGA gravy train for the rest of their careers.

The comment in the podcast that most connected with me was Bouelle's statement about it not just being about the South as a geographic area, specifically. I live in blue part of blue MA, and the whole giant American and/or Confederate flag flying off the back of a pickup with Eric Church or similar blasting is all over the place here.

Head out into Worcester or Franklin county, even more so.

Cross the border into southern NH, even more so.

What thinking lately about the whole moment we're in, and have been in since probably Reagan, is that this country has never successfully come to terms with the negative or darker side of our history. There is a lot that is negative in our history - violent, genocidal, explicitly and thoroughly racist. And we've never really found a way to come to terms with it.

So we end up with these weird overcompensating mythologies about American exceptionalism - how special and wonderful and indispensable we are.

And the people who do try to call it out are accused of "hating America". And some of them seem caught up in our darker corners, like they themselves can't let go of it or move past it.

And a lot of the really toxic shit has never really gone away. One of the remarkable things to me about the last 40 years or so is the degree to which it's become OK again to be an unapologetic racist. Or at least a "scientifically based" racist, see also the Bell Curve crap.

Or an unapologetic misogynist, or at least a proponent of the idea that men are somehow supposed to be the bosses. See also Charlie Kirk. Andrew Tate, who is clearly one sick bastard, has over 10 million followers.

I think this ends up - as Cottem points out - being "shunted off" onto the South because that region has the most overt history of, specifically, chattel slavery. The Confederacy was an explicit attempt to establish a state based on the doctrine of white supremacy and the legitimacy of black slavery. It's an obvious vector for the worst in our history. And, that is an obvious source for resentment on the part of the folks who live there.

But the whole country is complicit in that history, and I think the whole country participates in a refusal to come to terms with it in an honest way.

As a point of contrast, Germany post WWII was able to move past Naziism - to not continually be engaged in arguments about it (I think - right Helmut?) - by owning it, recognizing it as toxic and a point of shame, and making explicit choices to reject it. Until AfD I guess.

And I think the way Trump fits into this is that his own personal pathology mirrors that of the nation perfectly.