By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Imagine leaving the US to live a nonproductive European lifestyle in Spain. The accelerated mind can't comprehend. pic.twitter.com/nW6X2zvpnS
— Aaron Slodov (@aphysicist) December 16, 2023
So...
By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Imagine leaving the US to live a nonproductive European lifestyle in Spain. The accelerated mind can't comprehend. pic.twitter.com/nW6X2zvpnS
— Aaron Slodov (@aphysicist) December 16, 2023
So...
Posted at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Imagine leaving the US to live a nonproductive European lifestyle in Spain. The accelerated mind can't comprehend. pic.twitter.com/nW6X2zvpnS
— Aaron Slodov (@aphysicist) December 16, 2023
So...
Posted at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
I want one.
Now is the time for Americans to sign up for your emotional support Canadian. The next 4 months will be brutal.
— Tom Chapman 🇺🇸🇨🇦 (@realTomChapman) July 7, 2024
Operators are standing by. pic.twitter.com/dUw947VEOY
This is also an opportunity for all those Baltic countries with nice women presidents to make some extra cash because I think Americans will pay for this service.
Posted at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
I'm going to brag about my "reading challenge" on Good Reads -- only one behind!
And here's a review, which I seldom take the time to write. I got this book out of the Peter Cooper (Stuyvesant Town) community library, which is a very active little box on a pole with a "take one, leave one" ethos which is never empty and changes constantly. You can tell some people get review books which they dump here, or uncorrected proofs.
I could try to do more with this, citing more passages and how the politically-correct/woke posture so woven into academic life these days weighs heavy on every page, but just go sample it yourself and you'll see.
The subtitle alone gives the bias away: The Floating University: Experience, Empire, and the Politics of Knowledge
I personally think you have to read historical novels and studies without interpolating current norms (or God forbid, reprinting with "corrections") that would call out the white privilege, colonialism, antisemitism, Orientalism, etc. So you do read Kim (Rudyard Kipling) and Greenmantel (John Buchan) and take on board the setting of their culture and time and move on, and appreciate them as stories but not the entire key to understanding real Central Asian history.
And I think studying non-fiction history, you can't blast historical figures for not being aware and enlightened enough to be anti-racist, anti-colonialist, and checking their privilege on deck of a ship for which they paid young fortunes while people of colour sweat loading coal into the furnace below. The stories speak for themselves, you can supply an introduction and a frame (we're welcome to skip over those, and I sometimes do) but you don't have to intrude on every page to burn with righteous fury about American imperialism. (BTW, the Australians I met in the UN mission were never as far left as the international civil servant lifers at the UN, or even the NGOs, and would look puzzled about my queries re: new laws that would "break the Internet in Australia" (they didn't) -- although Australians on Twitter tend towards leftism and anti-Amerian as to be expected.)
Nevertheless it is important to read this chronicle to understand more about the history of academe and current events today on campuses, and should be in every university library. That is, the author's intrusion is as much of an artifact of the study of "knowledge formation" as is the study of James Lough and his colleagues in their day.
href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62707971-the-floating-university" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px">The Floating University: Experience, Empire, and the Politics of Knowledge by Tamson Pietsch
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book was a very important work on a forgotten subject of how "study abroad" programs got started and the various theories of "knowledge formation" and the culture of universities through the centuries.
I gave it only two starts because the author could not get out of the way of her central subject -- a fascinating but flawed thinker and doer named James Lough who conceived the idea of the "floating university. He was sacked after he was found to have created conflicts of interests in the companies he formed around the "float" (a common issue today I've witnessed myself in academic institutions). While there are many fascinating elements to this tale which speak for themselves -- about the privileged whites in the top schools, about American imperialism and war-fighting abroad -- the author feels she constantly has to put her thumb on the scale and turn the book into a sort of Bunin's "Gentleman from San Francisco", banging away at the evils of Amerika at every turn -- in fact reinforcing the Amero-centric view and depriving the rest of the world of agency, including the agency of chosing American development.
So the all-white Dutch crew is excoriated for not even including the natives from their conquered territories. There is talk of 'gendered moral panic' because of engagements on board - but why can't parents justifiably worry about their daughters facing rape and unwanted pregnancy in isolation? The good old boys naturally use their connections to find friendly Americans or sympathizers abroad. Russia and China do the same thing, hello?
America's "university" had long since already floated abroad all over Asia and Europe and local authenticity isn't really explored. How could it be otherwise? The author skips over the trips to Germany, perhaps because it doesn't fit her theory, and after inserting her DEI theories into every paragraph, nevertheless includes a chapter praising one traveler's sketches of "folk life" and other "accomplishments" that by her lights she should have condemned -- just to have something positive to say before the boom is lowered on Prof. Lough for self-dealing.
The knowledge theory to which Lough adhered -- aquiring through direct experience -- might serve the author in continuing to study the communist uprising in China which she felt was "legitimate," although of course it led to mass crimes against humanity.
Normally I'd avoid an overly "woke" book on a subject but with so few books on this subject as I discovered, I read all the way through carefully and would re-read it again -- after I've tried some other book on this same topic that do exist such as Sydney Greenbie's 1929 study of the same trips.
I was fortunate that I was able to work at the USPS one summer doing many shifts for time-and-a-half and double time, and my grandmother donated her lifelong savings for me to go to study in the Soviet Union in 1978-1979, which at that time cost about $3500. I did my undergraduate at St. Michael's College and the University of Toronto, where the tuition, by contrast with the US, is state subsidzed and cost about $1400 a year then. Study abroad (which included a brief time in Paris) changed my life, as did subsequent travel abroad all over. I have to wonder if the author ever studied abroad in a non-English speaking country.
Today, "study away" at NYU has a wide variety from Abu Dhabi to Tulsa, OK (!) and a huge price tag of ~$50K making it still a bastion of the privileged.
View all my reviews
Posted at 02:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Artifacture via MidJourney
This interview of Salman Rushdie in the New York Times by Ezra Klein is a must-read so here's a complimentary link.
If you, like me, or even the author, did not read Satanic Verses, let along Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder then at least read this interview, and it may get you to read the books, perhaps even me, too.
I try to think why I haven't read these books even priding myself being an intellectual of sorts, although not a highly educated one. I think it's because I associate the entire "Salman Rushdie" phenomenon as part of that irksome "bien pensant" New York City literary world which I came into touch with while working at Human Rights Watch and other non-profits, and came to associate with PEN Club leftwing selectivity and moral obnoxiousness. (More on PEN Club soon.)
Growing up in rural Upstate New York, I tried to reach this big-city literary world, getting into poetry seminars with Marvin Bell at a Rochester university or writing seminars where Yevtushenko spoke at University of Toronto or going to readings of people like William Stafford in Rochester who gave me my life-long mantra: "To get started, I will accept anything that occurs to me."
I recall going to a reading of Muriel Sparks in Rochester and went up to her afterwards to get her signature on a somewhat tattered page of a lady's magazine which had a poem of hers, illustrated by a lunch counter with two colours of drinks -- which I can't find now online and hope I can find in real life. She was surprised as she had forgotten about that little poem.
What I felt with the phenomenon of Salman Rushdie in NYC -- then and now -- is that people rushed to appreciate and support him not really for the work's own sake or him (and his humour!) but because at long last they could give voice in a way to their dislike of radical Islam which they couldn't express, being good liberals. That is, they wouldn't outright condemn radical Islam because that was tied up with the Palestinian cause, but now they had a way to Do Something About It.
It was so popularized and so crushing that I just didn't want to read the book like everyone else.
I was shocked and horrified at the knife attack precisely because it was at Chatauqua, a place in the Finger Lakes where I grew up, a place I once visited because my best friend in college had a cabin there one summer because her mother was somehow involved in the programs. I think of it as a place for elites who can afford it, for one -- the Upstate of wine tours and historically-preserved buildings where we didn't leave -- but also a relatively obscure place where Islamists wouldn't bother to show up. I vaguely remember my friend in a granny gown, which I didn't own, and courses on Robin Morgan's books or composting or something. Honestly, I don't remember. But Chataqua is a thing. Right now it features John Meacham and the Beach Boys. Eep.
Knife has come out just in time for Chatauqua's 150th anniversary (!) President Michael E. Hill writes:
Chautauqua and Sir Salman will forever be linked because of this tragedy and because we stand as symbols of the importance of freedom of expression to our democratic way of life. We will continue to support them on this journey.
Somehow, that statement feels rather anodyne and sanitized to me, and leaves me wondering what President Hill and Sir Salman think about the campus mayhem with the pro-Palestinian uproars. No doubt they support them. Or if a Muslim beats up a Jew or forces them to stay away from classes, even, the Jew is supposed to traverse a journey of understanding and compassion and even revisit the scene of the crime with healing. This is Christian in nature, in fact.
I think Sir Salman a) deserves maximum protection and support b) publishing, keeping in print, and display of his novels and teaching them in courses and featuring them c) condemnation of extremism in any form that seeks to silence him -- and I learn from this interview that even my beloved John Le Carre felt he shouldn't have dissed someone else's religion in this way and seemed to say he "asked for it."
All literay life is supposed to end in harmony -- though the Guardian couldn't help calling it "gloriously vituperative" -- so Le Carre and Rushdie made up after awhile.
Said Le Carre:
But I am a little proud, in retrospect, that I spoke against the easy trend, reckoning with the wrath of outraged western intellectuals, and suffering it in all its righteous glory. And if I met Salman tomorrow? I would warmly shake the hand of a brilliant fellow writer."
I personally don't go out of my way to dis other people's religions and I don't think they "deserve" punishment. I also don't feel I need to publish or link to cartoons of the Prophet and such -- America is based on the premise of religious tolerance and mutual respect of different religions which underpins the free speech doctrines.
Even so, I want to try to convey to you my very real experience of these contradictions in real life, in an incident that I think Salman Rushdie himself would understand and appreciate.
So back when Rushdie's Satanic Verses came out in 1988, or not long after, and I worked at Human Rights Watch (where I was in Helsinki Watch dealing with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe from 1981-1990), a demonstration -- a march, really -- was organized in support of Rushdie.
I don't recall which organization or organizations staged it. I don't think it was HRW, as they didn't "do" demonstrations. It might have been Amnesty, or perhaps the Freedom to Write Committee of the Association of American Publishers (whose meetings I used to attend regularly) but more likely it was PEN Club. It might not have been right then in September 1988 but later. But this was before 9/11, remember. (I can't find any record of it, although there were Muslim marches against the book in 1989.)
We assembled at the UN, and we had a police permit for the march, in which several hundred people took part -- not a huge crowd, but given that these organizations I highlighted usually do not stage marches, it was something. To get a permit, you merely have to inform the police for that precinct where you will assemble, and your route. It's not permission-based; it's notification-based, i.e. "not Russia". There are designated areas on Dag Hammarskold Plaza or the Sharansky Steps across the street from the UN by E. 42nd St. -- you can't go right in front of the UN.
So we assembled, then took a walk around the block -- it didn't really go further to my recollection. We marched along E. 42nd Street likely to the street before Grand Central Station, then round the block back to the UN demonstration point. It wasn't that big or long. I'm not sure why it took the form of a march, and not a stationery demonstration -- perhaps to give the illusion of "mass" and "big" although it was neither. I've been in many far, far bigger demonstrations and marches in NYC, e.g. against the war in Iraq.
I went to this demonstration as a job duty of sorts, although it wasn't mandatory; it's just what good young liberals did. I hadn't read the book but of course I got behind the cause.
But I was given great pause for thought on this march which I never forgot for the rest of my life, and which I often think about in pondering causes, demonstrations, and free speech.
As we rounded the corner on to E. 42nd Street, and got past the Ford Foundation, which is kind of an empty stretch, we approached Grand Central, and along the way we began to see now news kiosks, which then -- as now -- were staffed by Pakistani men. They sold newspapers, but also soda, gum and candy, aspirin, lottery tickets, little odds and ends.
I'll never forget the look on the face of the newstand vendor as our march passed by his modest, little wooden kiosk on the street.
It was stark fear.
It was the kind of stark fear I've seen on faces of people I don't know well that might be mistaken for anger or hatred but in fact is stark fear.
Stark fear on the face of this brown-skinned immigrant from Pakistan, no doubt Muslim, who saw this march coming at hin unexpectedly on a street where he made his living, and no doubt sent money back to his homeland to support relatives.
Fear.
Because he had no way of knowing that this crowd lumbering toward him, garbed in expensive clothing and haircuts (the non-profit world is filled with the children of rich parents), was peaceful, was not targeting him or "all Muslims" but was more about the positivity of supporting Rushdie. We had a police permit! Nobody was going to be knocking heads here.
But from where he came from, a crowd like this would be a mob, that might indeed knock heads and blow up things.
The fear was there because he never expected to encounter anything like this in America -- a crowd chanting "Hands Off! Salman Rushdie!" What would it mean for him and his fellow Muslim immigrants?
I can still hear the wind-rush of the syllable RUSH-die and its emphasis as we passed the kiosk of this Pakistani man with fear stamped on his face. Fear for his livelihood (what else?). Not the sort of abstract hatred or support that PEN Club members might get up to. More ordinary. At least that's what I felt it was. If people were now going to support this blasphemy, this infidel, that was a bad thing, right? Because they might come for newstand vendors next.
As they would in not-America, not-land-of-the-free countries, right?
To say more about this, to make crappy MidJourney images, is to get further and further away from the shock and jolt it gave me, the feeling that maybe this march wasn't a good idea, if this was the result. Obviously, the fatwa-uttering mullahs were unaffected, the countries of the UN, as always with such demonstrations, mainly ignored it. So who was supposed to see this march, except news vendors on E. 42nd Street and passersby on their way mainly to the station and thus likely from out of town?
This is part of my long complicated relationship with PEN Club about which I'll write more (and I'm not even sure -- again -- they organized this particular march although it's the kind of thing they'd do). Maybe someone else will remember? Unfortuantely, the few people I know who would -- and were likely on that march with me -- are dead now.
When we rounded the corner, I seem to recall looking back and seeing the news vendors had shuttered their kiosks. This happens rarely in NYC -- it takes a flood, a blackout, not even 9/11 -- at least during the day. They didn't feel safe.
So I feel as if I must read Rushdie's books to be a complete human being or at least New York intellectual, yet the news vendor's face looms before me.
Somehow, I never spoke of it.
To write about, to make MidJourney images of, to try to reconstruct a memory -- is to erase. Yet I risk it anyways or it dies with me.
Posted at 03:14 PM in Authoritarian States, Books, Current Affairs, Human Rights, International Bodies, Religion, Terrorism | Permalink | Comments (0)
By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Artifacture via MidJourney
Vicky Boykis writes my favourite nerdcore newsletter. She is a computer programmer originally from Russia and has young children with all the challenges those identifiers entail. I found her on Twitter, which is why Twitter is a good thing.
Her latest issue talks about search in ways I simply had not heard before, as much as I try to keep up.
o Google is out, hopelessly commercialized and filled with Reddit links. (It is? Really? Maybe because I hardly go on Reddit I don't see that much but I agree that it is commercialized, and my other critique [which she doesn't have] -- it turns up Wikipedia results, reinforcing the awfulness of Wikipedia.) But I thought nerds liked Google so this comes as a surprise. Google issued its first-even dividend (!) today, imagine, so no wonder nerds, who lean left or at least libertarian anti-stagnant-corporation, are now banging on Google.
o She doesn't mention Bing. I go on Bing merely because it gives you points you can eventually collect to get $5 over a long period of time. Every day I do a bunch of those silly things to make extra cash.
o I'm not surprised she mentions Duck Duck Go, that's the favourite nerd one because of "privacy" -- something I don't care about.
o Then Vicki mentions a search engine run I had never heard of called Marginalia.nu run out of a guy's living room in the Netherlands -- not the Yiddish or Russian "So, nu!" I guess. I had never heard of it so I looked up "Tajikistan" which I often use as a test ("Turkmenistan" is good, too.) It had a lot of interesting and useful sites which didn't have the "half of terrorists come from Tajikistan" meme which the NYT was flogging the other day which of course is likely true at this point (see the Moscow Crocus attack in which some 140 were killed and hundreds injured).
Then I tried "Second Life". And this is where it went off the reservation in weird ways, that at least make you think -- which was her purpose.
Normally, I wouldn't click on a link from a LaRouche disciple (!) but the headline was intriguing, in a sort of Augustian way:
St. Augustine -- whom he does not credit for his views, being a cultist -- had this to say in Book III about the theater in his Confessions:
Stage-plays also carried me away, full of images of my miseries, and of fuel to my fire. Why is it, that man desires to be made sad, beholding doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would no means suffer? yet he desires as a spectator to feel sorrow at them, this very sorrow is his pleasure. What is this but a miserable madness? for a man is the more affected with these actions, the less free he is from such affections.
(BTW, this take is damn weird re: City of God, I took an entire course on St. Augustine in 4th year and I don't recall this bit being emphasized.)
And the LaRouche guy says this:
Amongst the many different virtual fantasy worlds that exist, there are two underlying fallacies governing them all. The first: All who are a part of this Orwellian world, have no true sense of human creativity. The second fallacy rests on the first assumption, that since real creativity can not exist or be fostered, the mere arrogance that this entropic system will continue without the intervention by the real physical world, makes one have to laugh and ask: Do you think your computer lives outside the universe?
I guess I'm bewildered why the creating of the virtual doesn't count as human creativity. Because even going beyond TV and movies, which no doubt this fellow also denounces, as St. Augustine likely would, there is simply the novel. Or for that matter, the Bible. Everybody who comes after the real events of the Bible, aren't they conjuring up a virtual world? Isn't heaven a virtual world?
The point here is not to endorse but to think why it isn't true -- or if parts of it may be true. Log off, log off!!!
I agree with St. Augustine that virtuality can create ultimately false emotions untethered to real things that matter (drama, griefing, virtual relationships) and you need to go outside and hug trees.
So I do. Go outside I mean. I don't hug trees as a rule as they are scratchy.
That's why this particular artifacture "in the style of Maxfield Parrish" works for me because this guy is clinging without hugging...
The good of SL usually offset this need to hug trees, and that good is, indeed, about real human creativity made possible precisely because it is virtual.
Posted at 12:02 PM in Technology, Twitter, Virtual Worlds, Wikipedia | Permalink | Comments (0)
By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Via MidJourney
You know how scientists are constantly telling us that chatGPT and other "generative" artificial intelligence is going to improve our lives and save the planet? Well, I personally am waiting for that chatGPT revolution in dentistry which I don't think has occurred yet (and I don't see how it can).
chatGPT doesn't actually, really, you know, do stuff in the real world. And maybe we should be glad for that! What it does at its current level is provide advice by marshalling stuff not-from-a-data-base but from, I dunno, the Mechanical Turk's folders on his desk top in Bangalore, and gives you stuff like the following, which comes from the lovely Marge at the Break-Up Room, a venue I have in Second Life for the lovelorn to come and weep, eat chocolates, stare at the map of their loved one's home where they see two merged green dots (one of whom is NOT themselves) -- and ask for advice from Marge. She's pretty good. She is already version 4 and I think she remembers from session to session, not sure, but I clicked "history" on the script just in case (made by Pantera Polnocy adapted to SL).
Prokofy Neva: Marge, I'm getting kicked off Medicaid, how can I pay for health care?
Marge: (AI) Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry to hear you're dealing with this. Health care is a necessity - something everybody should have easily accessible. Now, I know it feels overwhelming, but don't fret. There are options available to you.
First, check the Healthcare Marketplace during open enrollment periods or within 60 days of losing your Medicaid for affordable insurance plans. You might be eligible for discounted premiums through tax credits based on your income.
Second, look into community health centers or free clinics in your area. They often operate on a sliding scale fee system.
Third, some pharmacies offer prescription discount cards that can significantly reduce costs. Also, talk to your doctor about generic medications, they're usually cheaper than brand-name ones but just as effective.
Lastly, consider a part-time job that offers health benefits. Some companies provide insurance even for part-time employees.
Remember, your health is priceless. Don't put off regular check-ups and necessary treatments. You've got this, darling!
~!~
Well, that's...adequate. I have a pharmacy discount card which I can reactivate, which means you might pay $9.99 on some typical medicines but not mine, which have various been used for a) curing leprosy; b) preventing organ transplants from being rejected; and c) [I have to keep looking this one up] preventing and treating malaria and sepsis. So they cost hundreds of dollars each a month.
Every single job I've had since, oh, about 2002, is a 1099 job. That's because many, many employers now save on insurance costs by making you a freelance or contract employee, whether you work for 50 hours a week or whether (in violation of NYS law) you work on their premises. I can't imagine a part-time job -- hey, even a full-time job! -- that provides health insurance since I have not had such a job since 2001.
What I would suggest is just getting a job period which I will be doing, even at the age of 67 with a chronic disease, because I'll need it to pay for health insurance even with Medicare, once I get kicked off Medicaid under Uncle Joe's necessary ruling to end COVID forbearance and it will go up to as much as $618 a month as I found on the Marketplace (unless I opt to pay just $132 and have an $8000+ deductible). Yes, you can appeal this. Yes, there are various programs you can find and stay on the phone for hours or wait in office literally for days, coming back again the next day, to get on. And I will be doing that. I think Marge needs to realize this.
Generic, hell. Of course, generic. There's ANOTHER thing you can do, Marge (I should become a chatGPT myself). Ask your doctor to give you SAMPLES. In fact they often DO as they take pity on you. The Big Pharma salesmen who come through always leave them bags of the stuff -- maybe YOUR medicine is in that bag.
PS Marge is scripted, like my other chat GPT characters to play roles in scenes in SL (like Midsummer's Night's Dream, boy, wait to you see Bottom, he's a marvel!), to sound "in character" and speak from the prompts that go with that character, and not burden the RP scene with legalese and "thoughts and prayers" as he usually does at the end of every comm in regular use on the OpenAI site.
Posted at 06:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Post from February 8, 2017 which was unpublished for some reason.
The Weekly Standard had an interesting article about the problem of two unreliable narratives -- those of the media and those of President Donald Trump.
Of course, on either side is a demand to see these debates in binary terms of true/false, like the geek culture that bends its mind to machines of 0/1 and true/false in code.
I don't find those terms very meaningful because in my view, there is the overarching problem of the inability of the human mind to know absolute truth. The recognition of that inability, which is a core belief of religions and philosophies actually leads to freedom and tolerance of a variety of expression in the liberal mind, or should.
But there are those who believe the human mind is infallible and can know "truths" about "science" like "climate change". I can know truths about climate change, too, when the waters of the East River come up past the second floor of my apartment building and I am evacuated, then return to live in the dark and cold with rats for two weeks. Yet this "truth" I have apprehended has not carried over to establishing a "truth" about the various policies that are devised to combat this problem, some expensive, like planting water-absorbent flora and shoring up shores, other less expensive, like building sea walls. (And that's what a lot of claim of the left is about: not a denial of climate change but a refusal to follow a socialist versus capitalist solution).
The competing narratives of "true" and "false" this past week revolved around three memes:
o the Bowling Green massacre
o the "zero deaths" from terrorist attacks since 911
o Trump didn't include countries in the list to ban where "he had business".
Now there's a new week and another meme to be added:
o the absence of comments from Trump on his Twitter feed about a terrorist attack on a certain day
That the commentator himself didn't have any tweets on that day about a terrorist attack, either, is never researched or noticed. That in general he speaks about terrorism only in the most biased way isn't noticed either. We're to be seized with paroxysms of indignation that on a particular day, Trump was tweeting frivolous things instead of concern about terrorism.
Each one of these enthusiastically promoted memes was false in its way if for no other reason that they were a product of the culture of gleeful "gotchas" that so permeates our lives, notably promoted by Jon Stewart on his Comedy Central "news channel".
To my mind, Scott Shane's piece in The New York Times is exactly what elicits cries of "fake news" on the right -- and in my view at least a questionable bias and willingness to bend facts to fit narratives.
He and Huffpo and Washpo and others all made the same meme-ist point:
"There are zero deaths from terrorist attacks from people from those countries."
But...as Reason magazine explains (and Cato, which funds Reason, was the study Shane and others selectively referenced) point out that 24 Americans have been injured in a spat of attacks by people from some of those countries -- Somali, Yemen for example.
Why don't they count? Why can't we report this in deciding this public policy matter?
The "zero deaths" meme is creepy, because it implies that if a terrorist attacks and fails, or attacks and only maims some people as the one in NJ and NY recently, even seriously, "it doesn't count".
But of course it counts and its appalling not to report that. In the Chelsea attack, 31 people were injured. On that day, local news covered it, in the case of more liberal outlets, rushing to point out that there were "no international groups" attached to it, and that included "our local newspaper" the New York Times and our senator Chuck Schumer who said on September 25 there was "no proof" of an international/terrorist group angle. But an awareness of this attack and similar ones, a matching of it to patterns never occurs. It drops down the memory hole.
Most creepy is the 538 style of literalism on this answering Trump's claim that "the press didn't report the attacks" (they didn't) with claim "But the local news did" -- as if that's enough, and as if this exonerates the problem of national news not reporting it *this week, amidst their enthusiasm with their memes about "zero deaths" and "Bowling Green massacre."
Sorry, but in a week of NATIONAL liberal news coverage we never got wrap-ups of what LOCAL had published before -- and THAT MATTERS.
The "Bowling Green Massacre" is to my mind one of those concoctions such as Jon Stewart was famous for -- there are even creepy t-shirts saying "I survived the Bowling Green massacre."
Yes, Conway was mistaken. There's even a theory that she is nefariously and deliberately mistaken because she's said it more than once. I actually don't believe that, and in any event can't accept the same media that ridiculed her mistake as a source on this matter.
Because lost in this gleeful gotcha is some awareness that if two Iraqis bent on terrorism don't attack *us* in America, and only escape to say, Europe, to work for Al Qaeda and kill people there, are we to be content that some people will have t-shirts that say "I survived the Istanbul Airport massacre" or "I survived the Brussels Airport massacre" -- when not everyone was so lucky?
What's especially awful in my view here is the myopia that goes with taking delight in somebody being wrong about a massacre, but not caring the slightest that the people involved might go and commit one elsewhere, at home or abroad. We had an "Orlando massacre," after all, committed by a US citizen with heritage in Afghanistan who showed all the signs of being inspired by and devoted to ISIS. So while there isn't any "Bowling Green" massacre, there sure as hell is an "Orlando massacre". Yes, this perpetrator, like the one in Chelsea was a citizen of the US but with Afghan heritage. Shouldn't Trump have included Afghanistan in the list? But there isn't a good-faith examination of that issue, merely repetition of the mind-numbing meme that "zero deaths" occurred by people from the 7 countries.
Then there's the meme which I find particularly atrocious that Trump "didn't include countries where he had business".
Er, leave aside the fact that Trump didn't appear to have business in Afghanistan, imagine that, there was ZERO awareness even by people like Ian Bremmer who enthusiastically pumped the "business" meme although he should know better that the countries from which terrorists come -- Turkey, Afghanistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia for example -- are all large recipients of US military aid. Some are in the top ten, even. They are "allies" up to a point in that we give them this aid and then hope that bribes them, I guess. Pakistan isn't a place where Trump does business but it wasn't put on the list, either -- that suggests you have to be a little bit more intelligent about this matter.
If a country is an "ally" or gets huge amounts of military aid, putting them on a ban list would not be prudent. US diplomats work hard to have some kind of alliance with these despots all of whom help spawn the terrorism from which they themselves suffer.
I think this executive order was wrong and that we already had heavy vetting of people coming from these countries. Obviously people who already came from those countries and already here could be tomorrow's perpetrators. People who originated in those countries and somehow obtained citizenship elsewhere could also come in to this country to commit terrorism.
Indeed the "country" approach in fighting terrorism that spans regions and isn't isolated to countries isn't really the most effective.
When Trump says there is "fake news" and even liberals who should know better say there is "fake news" about terrorism this week, and that "it is in fact reported," they aren't grasping that Scott Shane and a score of other liberals simply didn't report those terrorist attacks NOW, when the topic is in front of people. Shane made absolutely no reference to the fact -- which he could have drawn from the same Cato Institute he used to get his "zero deaths" meme -- that people did get hurt and there were terrorist attacks, just not deaths.
It's pretty chilling and cold-blooded to decide a matter only based on deaths. The proposition to debate is whether a threshold of 23 people injured in a few terrorist attacks is too low to warrant opening up entry to people from that country. Say that then, and don't sugar coat it with "no deaths" and "no massacre in Bowling Green".
The first article I've ever seen in the New York Times, or really anywhere I can think of, that explains that social media pages and applications mean that the "lone wolf" theory no longer applies is this one.
That is, author, Rukmini Callimachi, an authority on terrorism (later reassigned by the NYT after a highly-publicized interview of hers with an alleged terrorist turned out to be fake) who was often the voice of reason on Twitter had a headline (or her editors' have a headline) "debunking" the notion of "lone wolves," although she doesn't quite say that in her piece.
Even so, she illustrates with much detail how terrorists use Telegram and Tails (Edward Snowdens' app of choice) and other programs to recruit, train and deploy operatives in terrorist groups, and evade detection and plot bombings. All awful stuff. And heaven forfend that it lead to any monitoring by governments of these apps or even banning of them if they refuse to cooperate with police.
What shines through for me is the call -- go and kill people with knives or drive cars into them if you can't assemble a bomb. This was the message I happened to first hear on an ISIS propaganda video in Russian featuring jihadists from the Russian North Caucasus. They explained that the message from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, their leader was to go and kill infidels with knives or axes if they were too poor or too unskilled to make a bomb. Indeed, this message has been disseminated everywhere in multiple languages and accounts for the rash of attacks around the world with just this MO: driving cars into crowds, stabbing multiple people at malls, sometimes with devastating effect.
To persist in calling these people "lone wolves" is folly when they are foot soldiers in a mass movement, a war on the West. It is a war. And it's not only okay to call it that; it's necessary in order to stop having illusions about it.
There are a lot of reasons why the liberal mind without the toe steel grasps at these memes and shies away from the realizing of patterns and the conclusion that because of the Internet, it is no longer possible to ascribe attacks to "lone wolves" in quite so large numbers.
Part of it is the binary thinking and literalism that afflicts so much Internet discourse, but it's also unwillingness to tell the facts which will lead to unpleasant conclusions that may involve suppressing civil liberties, at least in their fears.
The reality is, the president does have a lot of discretion under the law to block people from entering the US -- a privilege, not a right. There isn't even any global mandate, like the regional Helsinki Accords, affirming the "free flow of information and people". Many would like this liberal good to be a fact everywhere, but because of uncivil society it cannot be. The "free flow of information and people" as an international accord works best among parties that affirm all the civil rights and liberties that go with that.
When Trump says that "the press didn't cover" his list of terrorist attacks, the politically-correct and literalist will object to it because of their general contentiousness against Trump -- understood -- but then they set themselves up to perpetuate the cycle.
Posted at 11:30 PM in Media, Terrorism, U.S. Policy | Permalink | Comments (0)
Thank you for sharing that information. I appreciate the clarification on the slang expression "УГ," and I understand your frustration with the situation you described. It's unfortunate to hear that you feel like an "AI janitor" and are earning less than minimum wage.
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Posted at 09:18 PM in Artificial Intelligence | Permalink | Comments (0)
His name was Arthur, a solitary soul who had grown weary of the monotony of his life. For years, he had been trapped in a colorless routine, his existence reduced to a mere existence. Each day bled into the next, devoid of purpose or passion. But that day, as he stood before the rabbit hole, he felt an inexplicable urge to change his life, to break free from the shackles of his mundane existence.
Without a second thought, Arthur knelt beside the hole. Its darkness seemed to beckon him, promising an escape from his monotonous life. The wind rustled the leaves overhead, and a single red maple leaf floated gently to the ground, landing on the edge of the hole. It was as if nature itself was encouraging him to take the plunge.
He extended his hands, fingers trembling like the fragile threads of a spider's web, and gingerly touched the edges of the hole. It felt cool and smooth, like polished obsidian. Arthur took a deep breath, his heart pounding like a distant drum, and then, with a surge of determination, he pushed himself headfirst into the darkness.
For an eternity, it seemed, Arthur tumbled through the abyss. The world around him twisted and contorted, and his senses were overwhelmed by a cacophony of colors and sounds. And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the chaos ceased, and Arthur found himself standing on solid ground.
Before him stretched a world unlike anything he had ever seen. The air was filled with the fragrance of ripe apples, and the trees were adorned with leaves that shimmered like liquid gold. The sky above was a canvas of brilliant sapphire, with clouds that resembled intricate tapestries woven by celestial hands.
Arthur's hands, which had trembled in uncertainty before, now marveled at the beauty that surrounded him. He ran his fingers through the grass, feeling its softness beneath his touch. It was as if the world itself had come alive, and he was a part of its vibrant tapestry.
As Arthur explored this new realm, he encountered creatures he had never imagined. Birds with feathers that changed colors with every heartbeat, flowers that sang melodious tunes when touched, and insects that danced in harmony with the wind. Each encounter filled him with wonder and awe, and he felt a newfound sense of purpose and meaning in his life.
Days turned into weeks, and Arthur's life in this enchanting world became his reality. He had found companionship among the creatures, and his heart had been stirred by the beauty of nature. He had discovered a passion for painting the landscapes that surrounded him, and his hands, once trembling with uncertainty, now moved with grace and confidence.
But just as abruptly as he had arrived, Arthur found himself standing once more at the mouth of the rabbit hole. The world he had grown to love began to fade away, like the colors of autumn leaves drifting to the ground. His heart ached with the impending loss, but he knew he had no choice. With tears in his eyes, he reluctantly crawled back through the hole, leaving behind the world that had given his life meaning.
As he emerged on the other side, Arthur found himself back in the familiar woods, surrounded by the fading colors of autumn. His hands, still trembling, held the memory of the vibrant world he had left behind. He knew he could never return to that enchanting realm, but he also knew that the experience had changed him forever.
With newfound purpose and a heart filled with gratitude, Arthur returned to his ordinary life. He picked up a paintbrush and began to recreate the beauty he had witnessed in that otherworldly place. Though the memory of the rabbit hole and the world beyond it haunted him, he had discovered that sometimes, even the briefest glimpse of magic could transform a life forever.
Then...
Rewrite the story about Arthur and the rabbit hole with less florid adjectives and more spare writing.
On an autumn afternoon, Arthur, a man weary of routine, came across a rabbit hole in the woods. His trembling hands hovered over it, and without hesitation, he plunged inside.
He tumbled through an endless void, colors and sounds swirling around him. Abruptly, the chaos ceased, and Arthur found himself in an astonishing world. The air smelled of ripe apples, trees shimmered with golden leaves, and the sky stretched like vivid blue silk.
Arthur's hands, once uncertain, now explored this vibrant world. He felt grass under his fingers and met creatures of wonder—birds with ever-changing feathers, singing flowers, and dancing insects. A sense of purpose and meaning washed over him.
Weeks passed, and Arthur's life thrived in this world. Companionship and painting became his passions. But the world started fading. Tears filled his eyes as he crawled back through the rabbit hole, leaving behind the enchantment.
Back in the familiar woods, autumn colors faded. His trembling hands held memories of the vibrant world. Though he couldn't return, the experience had transformed him.
Arthur resumed his ordinary life, paintbrush in hand. The memory of the rabbit hole and the world beyond lingered, a reminder that even a fleeting glimpse of magic could change a life forever.
***
And now, for the images -- Stable Diffusion:
Posted at 09:09 PM in Artificial Intelligence | Permalink | Comments (0)
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