Friday
There is a happening currently happening along the Texas/Mexico border which seems to be escalating in an interesting way.
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The state of Texas has been taking measures to secure their border with Mexico. These measures include installing concertina wire (colloquially known as "razor wire") along the border.
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A supreme court ruling said that US Border Patrol (the feds) are allowed to go into Texas against Texas's wishes and cut this wire. As /u/slowboy points out below, it is a bit more nuanced than that. There was an injunction preventing CBP from going to cut the wires, and the Supreme Court overruled it. Interesting culture war fodder: Amy Coney Barrett sided with the majority on this.
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Yesterday, Greg Abbot signaled that he did not have any intention of complying with this.
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Today, President Biden said that Texas has until tomorrow (Friday) to let them in. (Sorry for the low quality link here. If somebody has a better one please share it).
This does seem to be escalating rapidly. I don't see where the offramps are other than Abbot backing down. If he doesn't, what does that mean? Texas National Guard vs the Federal Government sounds awfully close to...I hate saying this, but a civil war? That's not right though since I can't imagine them shooting at each other.
This is also confusing to me politically. The border situation is not a political win for Biden. Even among liberals the cracks are starting to show. Morning Joe (msnbc show) this morning was talking about how there is a border crisis and it's the republicans causing all this illegal immigration by not doing a "Comprehensive Immigration Policy". That's obviously absurd, but it does show that liberals are willing to agree that completely open borders are suboptimal.
Edit: Trump weighs in
This, to my stupid non-lawyer brain, seems way more like an "incitement to insurrection" than anything he said on January 6th. Interesting.
Eetan
1yr ago
In The Philippines, highly devout Roman Catholics will literally nail themselves to crosses during Good Friday to absolve themselves of sin and demonstrate their true devotion to the faith.
Does there exist a secular analogue to this tradition? Where can I be publicly crucified to profess my undying love for the prevailing secular orthodoxy?
Numerous atheist/secular/nonreligious people sacrificed their lives for causes they believed in.
For some current non-lethal example of extreme dedication, see, for example, various performative environmentalist actions.
gattsuru
1yr ago
There have been some interesting results in relation to the Hugo Awards, and to the broader WorldCon environment. Kevin Standlee, a previous chair of the World Science Fiction Society (the WorldCon runners) posts Elections have Consequences:
Something that I think most people have forgotten is that Worldcons happen in the real world and are subject to real-world conditions. Among other things, Worldcons have to obey the laws of the place in which they are held, no matter what their governing documents say.
An overwhelming majority of the members of WSFS who voted on the site of the 2023 Worldcon (at the 2021 Worldcon in DC) selected Chengdu, China as the host of the 2023 Worldcon. That meant that the members of WSFS who expressed an opinion accepted that the convention would be held under Chinese legal conditions. Furthermore, those people (including me) who suggested that there might be election irregularities were overridden, shouted down, fired from their convention positions, and told that they were evil and probably racist for even suggesting such a thing.
The Hugo Nomination statistics were released on Friday, and unsurprisingly there are some oddities. Some of the disqualifications are likely politically charged over Chinese-specific matters, and others more universal. To be fair, the exact rules for qualification are complex, and some past nominees have been screwed over by esoterica of first publication dates; given the number of new voters, it's not too surprising that some nominated works fell outside of the eligibility timeline.
To be somewhat less charitable, I'm not familiar with too many previous times where nominees were listed as eligible by associated vendors before getting disqualified. The nominations are also bizarre in other ways, if one expected a largely Chinese fandom: there's a few Chinese-original pieces and editors, but not many.
Officially, there was absolutely no political pressure for these decisions, which have an explanation that the WorldCon Chendgu admins won't be providing.
On one hand, it's hard to be surprised if something wacky happened, and surely the people who set up WorldCon inside the CCP should have known it'd be a charlie foxtrot one way or the other. It's even part of the WorldCon bylaws that given a lot of power to the laws of the hosting nation, as Standlee points out. WorldCon locations are determined by member votes, even if this rounds out a little weird.
On the other hand, there were some fun questions about exactly how fair that vote for the 2023 WorldCon bid was well before this point -- quite a lot of ballots were allegedly filled out remotely and dropped off by a small number of visitors. Which wasn't and currently isn't against the rules, mind you! And the WSFS certainly wouldn't bring up questions of authenticity in 2021.
((On the gripping hand, unlike nearly every other vote at WorldCon, the location vote is heavily vetted internally rather than going through a member nominee process; only sufficiently prepared locales are listed. And WorldCon Chengdu advocates had been wining-and-dining hard for a while, which, given the logistical issues the convention had that included a complete rescheduling, might have been descisive.))
Schadenfruede isn't great for the soul, so to some extent I'm pretty happy to that a number of critics of modern WorldCon have had better things to do with their time, even if I personally have struggled not to snark a bit. And it's hard to expect too much to come from any retrospective at this point: because ballots and nominations, proving or disproving any tomfoolery incoherent as a position; more likely, it ends up with some minor tweaks to the location bid process, and just becomes one of those weird bits of fan lore, like when people wonder why Mercedes Lackey disappeared from SFWA conferences.
It's already too late to pass out the Asterisk Awards v2, and most of the winners weren't bad; many would have won regardless, even if the novel slot is definitely curious. ((Though I'm definitely less-than-happy that Scalzi squeaked in a nomination on another terrible work because of the DQ's)). Which brings up the culture war side. Standlee has an example :
Imagine a Worldcon held in Florida. It would be subject to US and Florida law (and any smaller government subdivision). Given legislation passed by Florida, it would not surprise me if such a hypothetical Florida Worldcon's Hugo Administration Subcommittee would disqualify any work with LGBTQ+ content, any work with an LGBTQ+ author, or any LGBTQ+ individual, because the state has declared them all illegal under things like their "Don't Say Gay or Trans" laws and related legislation.
To be fair, Standlee gets pushback, and eventually admits that no, that's not actually the existing law. I expect if pressed hard enough, he'd even admit it would surprise him were a Florida WorldCon's subcommittee willing to comply with such a law. (To be a little less charitable, he's probably going to be a go-to example for people on the left assuming conservative jurisdictions will ignore courts orders, if only because most people use video format or circumlocutions). And perhaps there are uses to bringing forward a nearby hypothetical over a distant reality (and, tbf, the at-least-up-as-a-bid-but-still-implausible WorldCon Uganda gets some attention on File 770).
But it's a slightly awkward comparison. It's not like either of these hypotheticals are really things this cohort experience personally, or even by second- or third-hand. Yet they're useful boogeymen.
DradisPing
1yr ago
Since this is Friday Fun, I just want to say that Alien Ant Farm is a tragedy of the early 2000s.
They could have been the Michael Jackson rock cover band that everyone wanted. But no. They had to try to be real musicians and write their own material.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1yr ago
Wait, don't we already have Fun Friday?
Lizzardspawn
1yr ago
Sports Illustrated is no more.
The future of Sports Illustrated looked dire Friday after the publisher of the diminished outlet announced mass layoffs because its license to use the iconic brand’s name in print and digital was revoked.
“Yesterday, The Arena Group’s license to serve as the publisher of Sports Illustrated was terminated as a result of the company’s failure to pay its quarterly license fee despite being given a notice of breach and an opportunity to cure the breach,” the company said in a statement provided to The Post. “Authentic is here to ensure that the brand of Sports Illustrated, which includes its editorial arm, continues to thrive as it has for the past nearly 70 years. We are confident that going forward the brand will continue to evolve and grow in a way that serves sports news readers, sports fans, and consumers.
Now go woke, go broke is a simple and shadenfraude explanation, but I don't think it tells the full story. And with recent full wokeness on the swimsuit edition - well I doubt that it endeared the core audience more. And this year is already full with disney flops and victoria's secret epiphany that people like hot women.
Media in US is in trouble. While I hold the opinion that wokeness hastened their demise, probably it was inevitable. And the US journalistic class has a monoculture problem. There was obviously no one that knew how to run a media property targeted towards red bloodied males. To write films in Disney that are alluring to non CRT degree holding single women.
We are in a money is tight period - and the people that hold the reigns of the biggest media conglomerates have no idea how to sell to huge part of the audience.
Soriek
1yr ago
Yemen
The United States and the United Kingdom started launching attacks against Houthi targets in Yemen last week in response to the Houthi attacks against their ships. On Tuesday they struck for a third time, reportedly targeting a cache of anti-ship missiles.
According to a U.S. Central Command statement, the overnight strike destroyed four Houthi ballistic missiles that were prepared to launch and presented an imminent threat to merchant and U.S. Navy ships in the region. The Houthi attack on the Zografia occurred later Tuesday and involved an anti-ship ballistic missile, the statement said, adding that the ship continued its Red Sea transit.
This latest exchange suggested there has been no let-up in Houthi attacks on shipping in the region, despite the massive U.S. and British assault on the group on Friday, bombing more than 60 targets in 28 locations using warship- and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles and fighter jets.
Within days it seems like we’re already on the precipice of another crisis situation for Yemen. The Houthis haven’t built up (or been able to build up) any capacity during their time in governance and 2/3rds of the country still depends on aid. Humanitarian organizations have had to suspend operations and 23 aid org have now said that if the conflict escalates they will be unable to provide the aid that keeps the population alive. Houthis have continued to attack commercial shipping anyway, so expect things to continue to worsen.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1yr ago
In 24 hours, we're basically talking about Trump tweeting out:
As of TODAY, Ukraine is and always will be, a NATO ally of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! Any attack on Ukraine will be an ATTACK ON THE USA and will be responded to accordingly by the United States and our allies!
Which I'd give slightly better than 2/3 odds of ending the war on the spot, given that the other 1/3 is "significant portions of Europe are glassed." If Trump did something like that, obviously it would be illegal on multiple fronts, but calling his bluff would be costly that there is a good chance Putin would back down before anyone can tell Trump that isn't how NATO works.
From the beginning I've thought the best "off-ramp" for Putin would be direct NATO involvement, allowing Putin to pull out and claim to be the peacemaker even with minimal gains, though we may be past that by now. Let a couple Russian jets shoot down a couple F-35s and they can claim victory while pulling back.
If you give him his whole first year, I think Trump is the perfect guy to help execute Placing Harry Windsor on the throne of a restored Kiev monarchy:
War is simply the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means. We deliberately use the phrase 'with the addition of other means' because we also want to make it clear that war in itself does not suspend political intercourse or change it into something entirely different. In essentials that intercourse continues, irrespective of the means it employs. The main lines along which military events progress, and to which they are restricted, are political lines that continue throughout the war into the subsequent peace -- Do I really have to attribute this one?
The government of Ukraine cannot end the war with Russia in a position where Russia could renew the war in the future. As the permanent neutering of Russia is impossible or inadvisable, most commentators want to provide Ukraine with some kind of security guarantee from the USA/NATO/PRC that will prevent future Russian aggression, but negotiated in some unspecified way that it isn't just adding Ukraine to NATO, which it is basically assumed Russia wouldn't accept unless, as above, Russia was permanently neutered, which, as above, is impossible or inadvisable. So how do we tie Ukraine to the NATO powers in a way that is genuinely credible and will be viewed by Ukrainians as a binding guarantee, but isn't article 5?
Let's look at how the Concert of Europe in the 19th century handled this: Constitutional or absolute monarchy was held to be the best form of government, and when a new country was formed, they would simply install a monarch from another royal family. The monarch's had no necessary special relation to their new domain, the first king of Belgium was originally considered for the job of king of Greece, which went to another German monarch instead. King Charles and his sons are descended from the Greek royal family [through a switch in royal houses en route] on his father's side, so it's family tradition to say: Prince Harry should form a mercenary corps, join the UKR forces and take Crimea, then Harry and Meagan should be installed as Grand Prince and Grand Princess of Kiev while naming Archie as Ilkhan of Crimea and heir while engaging him to the daughter of Ukrainian General or politician.
Harry does have some military experience in combat, and he's still young enough at 38 and popular enough, that he could credibly recruit a military force of thousands of veterans from the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia to join him in this venture. I think there's still enough weird tradition to get guys from the Commonwealth countries to want to ride out with a rogue devil-may-care prince into combat. He could get the money to fund their equipment and training from his friends Oprah and Tyler Perry and by selling the TikTok rights, or the CIA could fund it covertly, whichever, just get all the money for the full shebang of western toys. Take his fully equipped brigade of western veterans, go to Ukraine, and put up a good show. I don't think Harry is actually that bright, but he could find a bored retired general to handle the actual conquering for him.
At the end of the war, like our ancestors before us, the international community gets together to name Harry and Megan Grand Prince and Princess of Kiev. Now if Russia invades again ten years from now, do you really think that the UK is going to sit idly by and watch their King's son, their heir's brother, Diana's son, get thrown out? Maybe the UK public doesn't much like Harry and Meggan, but watching a close relative get deposed is just getting cucked as a kingdom, no way Sunak lets that happen. And is the US public going to let a celebrity BIPoC diverse prince and his valid mentally suffering actress mum get tossed in the tower? No way. We often mock the 19th century Royalists obsession with installing monarchs, but this was the purpose. It tied the new country to the international community by blood. In the same way, by creating a British ginger king and a halfrican American queen, Ukraine can guarantee that the two most important countries in NATO will have their back. And we'll be free of their podcasting project.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1yr ago
Working theory:
Median American / Western woman (especially before marriage) see cooking for her significant other regularly as some sort of 1950s housewife shackling and, therefore, have a highly emotional response to doing it. It's a "betrayal" to the ideas of modern feminism (however defined). But, a lot of these same women will do their best to throw down for Thanksgiving / Christmas / Super Bowl (any of the Big American Gluttony Feasts) when their own extended family is present and especially when a finacee's family is present. There's still something that whispers the necessity of nourishment providing in order to secure marriage approval. Maybe.
As for the over-representation in baking - yes, this is a thing. I often find it hilarious as about 50% of "bakers" are just freaking terrible and aren't producing anything better than the made-for-kids brownie packets I used to rock with my Mom on Friday nights in gradeschool.
Bosnia
Bosnian Republika Srpska’s long-time secession sympathizing leader Milorad Dodik has been kicking up extra dust lately. He’s been in the news for the past few years for threatening to withdraw from all of the country's federated institutions, like the court system and military, and for threatening to arrest the international peace envoy, and so forth. This Monday he illegally held a public celebration for Serbian independence day, banned by the court system for discrimination (and the legacy of the Serbian led ethnic cleansing in Bosnia). His intentions were pretty clear:
Bosnian Serbs are already "mentally integrated" into Serbia and would gladly support independence from Bosnia, their political leader Milorad Dodik told AFP just ahead of a controversial "national holiday"...
"We do not want to stay here," Dodik, president of Republika Srpska (RS), told AFP on Monday.
The US responded to this slight in traditional hegemonic fashion by flying two fighter jets over Bosnia. Dodik has waffled on claiming he wants secession outright but doesn’t seem to be backing down from the fight in general:
“I am not irrational, I know that America’s response will be to use force … but I have no reason to be frightened by that into sacrificing (Serb) national interests,” Milorad Dodik, the president of Bosnia’s Serb-run part, told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1yr ago
I don't know what you did right or wrong and won't pretend to.
I'll just note that the worst romantic mistake I ever made was dating a mediocre girl for a year in college. I never should have dated her, she was fine but I was never serious about her while she loved me.
Dumping her hurt like a bitch. I hated to hurt her like that. Watching her cry that hard hurt so bad, and she was wearing my rowing sweatshirt when I did it; and she took it off and refused to wear it out, so knowing she walked home in the cold made me feel so much worse. I dumped her on Friday and cried until Monday. It was like putting my dog down.
On Monday the woman who is now my wife got back from her visit home. She brought me a care package from new England. She'd been advising me "as a friend" to dump the gf. She had been scheming, like a sexy teenage Palpatine, on this subject for weeks. By Thursday she was my gf. This was the best decision I ever made.
I can't predict how it will end for you, but I can say that regardless I understand your pain. I hope all goes well.
ulyssessword
1yr ago
Related to @DuplexFields below, if you could create a system of weights and measures that would be used worldwide, what would you do?
The SI system is pretty good (and a vast improvement over the mishmash of units that they replaced), but IMO there's still room for improvement. The "kilo"gram is the most obvious failure with its extraneous prefix, a change of one Kelvin is too small to detect unaided unlike one second, meter, or kilogram, and the ampere and mole are just weird numbers.
My proposed system would keep water as the informal reference material, as well as the second. Everything else would change to match the new discoveries in the last ~150 years: I would keep the rotation of the Earth, the mass of an atom, and the density and freezing point of water, but replace the circumference of the earth, the force produced by electromagnetism, and the boiling point of water with absolute zero and the elementary charge as follows:
| Dimension | Value | Original Metric Derivation |
New Derivation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time | 1 s | 1/(24 * 60 * 60) day | No change |
| Length | 2.71 cm | 1/(40000000) circumference of Earth | A 1x1x1 cube of water masses 1 |
| Mass | 19.93 g | Water has density 1000 kg/m^3 | 10^24 carbon-12 atoms has mass of 12 |
| Electric Current | 160.3 mA | Magnetic force between wires | 10^18 elementary charges per second |
| Temperature | 2.7316 K | 100 degrees freezing-boiling |
0 is 0, freezing is 100 |
| Amount | 1 | Atoms per gram | None |
| luminous intensity | ?? | Whatever. |
Do you have any improvements to the metric system you can think of? Any other changes you'd like made?
Soriek
1yr ago
Japan
The funding scandal contains to rage on. Prime Minister Kishida has fired four top ministers, all from the Shinzo Abe faction of the Liberal Democratic Party, including:
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno; Economy and Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura; Agriculture Minister Ichiro Miyashita; and Internal Affairs Minister Junji Suzuki. All have emerged as the alleged recipients of suspected kickbacks of unreported fundraising proceeds. But of course it’s not over. Prosecutors have now raided LDP party offices:
Investigators from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors’ Office searched the offices of two LPD factions associated with former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former secretary-general Toshihiro Nikai, local media reported on Tuesday.
Prosecutors are investigating allegations that party officials failed to declare a combined 600 million yen ($4.18m) in fundraising proceeds, directing money to faction-run slush funds…
Kishida’s cabinet reshuffle, however, has done little to boost his flagging approval.
In an opinion poll published by the Mainichi newspaper on Sunday, 79 of respondents said they disapproved of the government – the highest figure since the poll began in 1947.
In other major Japan news, you’ve probably heard that US Steel, once the largest corporation in the world, is now being purchased by Nippon Steel for $55 a share. This may be less of a major deal than it sounds due to US Steel’s diminished status these days, though it certainly feels like it matters for symbolic reasons.
That $14.1 billion sale price, while a 40% premium from where US Steel’s stock closed Friday before the deal was announced, makes it a minor leaguer in today’s economy. The nation’s tech powerhouses - Apple, Google’s parent Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Nvidia - trade at a valuation of more than $1 trillion each. US Steel, even at the sale price, is valued less than 0.5% of the value of Apple, and less than 2% of the value of Tesla.
Its revenue last year of $21 billion is roughly what Walmart brings in every two weeks. Or to put it another way, it’s just over half of the annual sales that Apple receives just from its wearable products, primarily its headphones.
Morgenland
1yr ago
It would be great to see this post in the Friday Fun thread instead of Wellness Wednesday, but I assume this was your initial purpose and I should put the blame on your sleeplessness.
Soriek
1yr ago
Iraq, Iran, and America
Another follow up to a previous post on tensions between the US and Iranian aligned forces ramping up in Iraq. While President Al-Sudani (raised to power by the pro-Iranian parties the Coordinated Network) publicly condemned the attacks against America - and the counterstrikes - they have unfortunately continued and worsened.
Dozens of attacks on U.S. military facilities by Iran-backed factions in Iraq over the past two months as the Israel-Hamas war has raged have forced Baghdad into a balancing act that’s becoming more difficult by the day.
A rocket attack on the sprawling U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Friday marked a further escalation as Iraqi officials scramble to contain the ripple effects of the latest Middle East war.
Washington has sent messages that its patience is wearing thin.
After the embassy attack, the Pentagon said that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “made clear (to al-Sudani) that attacks against U.S. forces must stop.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told al-Sudani that Washington expects Iraqi officials to take more action to prevent such attacks, and believes they have the capability to do so, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.
During a recent trip to the region, CIA Director William Burns warned al-Sudani of “harsh consequences” if Iraq doesn’t act to stop the attacks, an Iraqi official said.
Soriek
1yr ago
Guinea Bissau
Following the thwarted possible coup attempt in Sierra Leone, gunfire also broke out at the capital in Guinea Bissau, and President Umaro Sissoco Embalo has formally called it a coup. Apparently parliament didn’t take him seriously enough about it, so Embalo decided to just literally dissolve parliament as well as the government. This is actually not the first time he has dissolved parliament in the last year (the first following an actual coup attempt, so needless to say he’s not a man much bothered by an absence of a legislative branch. The opposition party is in power anyway and previously blocked an attempt for him to aggregate more power to the office of the President, so who’s gonna miss them). Embalo has not yet said when or if there will be new elections.
FtttG
1yr ago
My girlfriend gave me this book earlier this year and I devoured it in two days. I was literally stepping away from my desk in work for ten minutes at a time because I couldn't wait to see what happened next.
vorpa-glavo
1yr ago
Yeah, I love Christmas, but even I'm tired of seeing it creep ever earlier in the year, swallowing up other holidays like Thanksgiving. I hate that I've had Thanksgiving dinner immediately followed by my mom and sister taking off for a "Black Friday" sale on Thursday that they went to in order to buy presents for Christmas. Frankly, Halloween seems like it is the only thing stopping Christmas from seeping even earlier into the year.
realaccountname
1yr ago
According to the Catholic Church, Eaater and Good Friday are #1 and #2. We worship Christ because of his passion, execution, and resurrection. He died and came back so that those who believe shall live.
Any Christian that celebrates Christmas over Easter has missed the point.
guesswho
1yr ago
I appreciate the point you're trying to make, but it kind of feels like it's ignoring how culture happens in a way that's hard to describe.
Like, yeah, Hanukah wasn't previously a major Jewish Holiday? And now it is.
How do we know it's a major Jewish holiday? Because of how much people talk about it and celebrate it and make a big deal about it and etc. Because of how much Hannukah paraphenilia is sold in stores.
The exact same way we know that Christmas is a major Christian holiday. Because Christians treat it as such.
It's not like Christmas has been what it is in modern America since 0AD. The date wasn't even known as Jesus's birthday until they made that up in the 200s. The holiday is descended from winter solstice festivals. In the 900s it was just celebrated by reading a special liturgy, and had nowhere near the importance of Easter or Good Friday. Gifts weren't exchanged until the latter half of the 19th century, most of what we recognize as the cultural event of 'Christmas' is a capitalist invention over the past century.
Christmas became 'important' for various reasons at various times, which is exactly what happened to Hannukah. Now they're both important and people treat them as such appropriately.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
I think acknowledging the Christian roots of these holidays and wanting acknowledgements of other religious holidays is distinct from being an attack on Christianity. The obvious reason why holidays like Good Friday and Christmas are holidays acknowledged by the federal government is religious, specifically Christian, influence. This is distinct from other non-religious holidays (like Canada Day or Thanksgiving). The question is whether the elevation of those specific holidays comport with our present values. What's the justification for having a federal holiday for Christian holidays but not Jewish ones? Or Muslim ones? Or any other religion? Having your nation's federal government have specific holidays that correspond to Christian holidays, but no other religion's, certainly feels like religious bigotry to me!
Venezuela
Venezuela held a referendum last Friday on whether or not to claim sovereignty over the Essequibo region of Guyana. Essequibo is mineral rich, and the exclusive economic zone contains quite a bit of oil, which Guyana has been busily contracting off to multinationals to Venezuela’s frustration.
Venezuela has always considered Essequibo as its own because the region was within its boundaries during the Spanish colonial period, and it has long disputed the border decided by international arbitrators in 1899 when Guyana was still a British colony.
That boundary was decided by arbitrators from Britain, Russia and the United States. The US represented Venezuela on the panel in part because the Venezuelan government had broken off diplomatic relations with Britain.
Venezuelan officials contend that Americans and Europeans conspired to cheat their country out of the land and argue that a 1966 agreement to resolve the dispute effectively nullified the original arbitration.
For reference, this is an area about the size of Greece (as Guardian helpfully points out) and equivalent to straight up two thirds of the territory of Guyana. Claiming the region amounts to essentially promising to invade and conquer most of the nation, so the Guyanese are understandably a little upset that the referendum has been approved. The linked article kind of suggests the >97% vote itself was fraudulent, or at least that observers didn’t see the kind of long lines and busy polling stations that the reported 10.5 million votes would have suggested. Ironically, this seems like the least interesting question to me; the anti-Maduro opposition also recognizes Essequibo as rightful VZL clay so it seems to be an idea with fairly popular support. The real question is: what happens next?
“Furthermore, Venezuelan military officials announced that Venezuela is taking concrete measures to build an airstrip to serve as a ‘logistical support point for the integral development of the Essequibo,’” she said.
The 61,600-square-mile (159,500 sq km) territory borders Brazil, whose defence ministry said earlier this week it has “intensified its defence actions” and boosted its military presence in the region as a result of the dispute.
Maduro is at least acting like he's serious:
Maduro said he would “immediately” proceed “to grant operating licenses for the exploration and exploitation of oil, gas and mines in the entire area of our Essequibo.” He also ordered the creation of local subsidiaries of Venezuelan public companies, including oil giant PDVSA and mining conglomerate Corporación Venezolana de Guayana....
In addition to the announcement regarding the exploitation of resources in Essequibo, Maduro announced Tuesday the creation of a new Comprehensive Defense Operational Zone, Zodi in Spanish, for the disputed strip, similar to the special military commands that conduct operations in different regions of the country.
But is Venezuela really about to invade Guyana? I would guess no, at least not while they have other issues and priorities they’re also focusing on (like becoming less of a regional or international pariah).
Meanwhile, can they even physically act on this? Guyana’s long term strategy in case of Venezuelan invasion has to be as un-invadable as possible, so a long time ago they designated the area on the border as a national park and left it extremely wild and overgrown. This makes traditional overland invasion difficult, so a hypothetical invasion could even require movement through Brazil, which is why Brazil itself is fortifying its own defenses. Lula has restored relations with Maduro, but he isn’t going to aid Venezuela in a hostile overland annexation of a long-time Brazilian ally by force.
So there probably isn’t a ton of will or means to act on this referendum. Most likely this is a way for Maduro to boost support in advance of the election.
And what about that election? In theory America’s lifting of the sanctions are contingent upon Venezuela lifting its ban on opposition leader Maria Machado from running in the election by the end of November. Well, it’s December now and things still look uncertain:
Opposition candidates barred from public office in Venezuela will be able to appear before the country's top tribunal, which will rule on their bans, the country's government and opposition said in a joint statement late on Thursday.
The announcement comes on the day of a United States deadline for the government of President Nicolas Maduro to take steps to remove the bans or risk the renewal of recently relaxed sanctions.
This is vague, but enough of a bone thrown that America isn’t going to reinstate sanctions right away, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens next. On the other hand, the top government prosecutor has suddenly accused several opposition of figures, so this is all somewhat two steps forward, three steps back. Ironically they are accused of trying to undermine the referendum on Guyana, which the opposition supported, and which is a largely amusing accusation given that the near 100% favorability results were quite likely fixed by the government anyway.
Netherlands
Negotiations on the Dutch government appear to still be stalled:
The official appointed to investigate possible coalitions after the Dutch election won by Geert Wilders ' far-right Party for Freedom said Friday he needs more time because of reluctance by potential partners to join Wilders in a government…
The delay comes after two key parties backed away from joining a coalition with Wilders. The new leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of outgoing prime minister Mark Rutte has said she will not join a coalition led by Wilders, but would offer it support in parliament.
Pieter Omtzigt, the leader of another potential coalition partner, New Social Contract, told Plasterk he was not yet ready to discuss forming a coalition with Wilders.
Similar to Spain and Poland, I will likely continue to provide updates here until the chips have fallen. Previous posts on the Dutch election can be found here and here.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1yr ago
I disagree that
There's plenty of good music.
For starters, The Beatles are boring. Maybe it's my zoomer ass not having grown up with them, but it's 4/4 pop-rock with uninteresting lyrics.
Which is...fine. It's easy listening music, maybe the production was impressive back then, but I don't feel it's stood the test of time.
The 21st century has brought a lot of innovative, unique, or masterfully composed music releasing.
Deathspell Omega's "The Furnaces of Palingenesia" is possibly the only sober depiction of the platonically ideal fascist society in humanity's art output. From a composition perspective, it's masterful, but I suspect people more schooled in music could explain why better than I could, so I'll just excerpt a couple lyrics.
From the song "The Fires of Frustration"
This exact mentality is present everywhere and I've never seen it summed up quite this succinctly. You see it in a Twitter mob ruining a life, a riot burning down a small business owner's life savings, a primitive tribe butchering its foes purely on instinct, a mass shooter waging war against the universe - encapsulated in a short statement that makes perfect sense, underpinned by echoing, growled vocals, a wall-of-sound guitar mass that has tantalizingly discernible melodies amidst the chaos, and impossibly frenetic drumming. It's art in its purest form, raw human reality given form.
Another quote from the song "Ad Arma", which I feel needs no accompanying commentary:
If this doesn't resonate with a Motteposter I don't know what will.
On the topic of violence, give Mili's "Dandelion Boys, Dandelion Girls" a listen.
At 1:53, the vocalist whispers
As her voice grows in strength she sings, almost triumphantly,
Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Temptations, with Fortunate Son and War respectively, probably win the anti-war songs competition just through the test of time, but I would contend that Dandelion Boys, Dandelion Girls comes damn close in artistic merit, even if it falls far short in raw popularity.
Alright, that's a heavy topic, so let's go to more "fun" music. For now let's stay in the land of the rising sun with a Japanese electronic music producer:
Camellia's "Berserkerz' Warfare 345" is proof that music is still innovating. Nothing like this was even being conceived of in the days you speak of, but here it is now. It's purely digital, it's way too fast for your grandparents, your parents, or even your older siblings, and in the 60s drums were not doing this nonsense. We can debate quality or artistic merit, but it's certainly innovative, and it gets my blood pumping faster than anything released before this millennium. See also Skrillex's "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" EP, which spawned an entire genre of purely computer-generated piss-off-your-dad music, and was tremendously popular to boot. Electronic music existed well before this, but it wasn't anywhere near as belligerent, chaotic, or willing to subvert genre trends.
Oh dear. I've mostly gone off into niche genres. Even Skrillex's "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" (the most popular song off the EP of the same name), only has 195 million plays on Spotify, a pale shadow of The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" with over a billion, or Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper", a personal favorite of mine, with half a billion.
So let's talk popular music. Lil Nas X dropped "Old Town Road", which was catchy enough to get almost 1.5 billion plays on Spotify, and innovative enough to damn near spark a race war between rap and country fans. He then released "Industry Baby", which has more plays than Old Town Road, and is similarly earworm-y. I think it's a fascinating cultural artifact, because the music video (NSFW warning) is almost downright pornographic in an extremely morally degenerate manner. It features homoerotic black nudity in the context of "prison bitch" culture and a touch of Satanic imagery just for kicks, and somehow spawned next to no controversy. Debate its quality all you like, it's a useful cultural landmark - much like The Beatles.
I take issue with the statement
"End It" is a black-fronted punk/hardcore band that is blowing any traditionally white bands in the scene out of the water, in my opinion. "New Wage Slavery" transcends the entire discography of Knocked Loose or The Acacia Strain, both traditionally popular bands in those genre circles. And if you haven't heard of a little band called Death Grips, watch "I've Seen Footage" performed live and realize that black-fronted punk bands can captivate a majority-white audience of angry kids better than almost any white musician right now. These are my niche examples and entirely disregard the fact that black rappers can pull white crowds big enough that literal deaths occur.
Beyond music,
I don't watch many movies, so I can't speak to a 21st-century equivalent to Monty Python or Clockwork Orange. Despite that, I'll take a stab at movies that subvert expectations. In "The Departed", the finale where (spoilers) basically every major character dies is masterfully executed, and also subverted the shit out of my expectations. "You Were Never Really Here" is a movie about a mercenary with PTSD, and its inaugural fight scene presents itself like it's going to be a John Wick style one-man-army movie, only to cut to security cameras showing the protagonist vomiting at the doorway before muted, off-camera, implied, or out of focus violence occurs to all the nameless security guards. Subversive and brilliant.
I started compiling a list of literature like Peter Watts' "Blindsight" and John Scalzi's "Old Man's War", and then some YouTube content that has more or less supplanted things like SNL in my eyes like Almost Friday TV's sketch comedy, but it occurred to me that I'm not sure I've touched on your central argument.
Is any of this a peak in art?
That's a more fascinating question, and one I'm substantially less qualified to answer. Other posters, I think, have made reasoned arguments for whether a peak is occurring, will occur, or can occur due to technology fragmenting fandoms, and I don't wish to rehash their arguments here. But I take major issue with the statement
because from my perspective it's simply not true. There's more and better art available to us than at any point in human history. We just can't tell what of it will stand the test of time yet.
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