Whither Labour?
In their haste to vote out conservatives, did the electorate create a monster?
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Ave, Herr Gilleland!
I don't know much German, but I know the words Fuß and Reise—"foot" and "travel/voyage/trip." So when I skipped over to Mike Gilleland's site and saw a walking poem called "Fußreise," I could easily figure out that it's almost the same as 도보여행/dobo-yeohaeng in Korean: "foot-journey," i.e., a walking trip. And I'm susceptible to the charms of walking poems. Wrote a so-so one myself some years back (click and scroll down to the bottom). I'm particularly partial to the poem known to Gandalf and Bilbo. Here's the middle part, hinted at in Peter Jackson's cinematic version of the story:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone.
Let others follow, if they can!
Let them a journey new begin.
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.
Meanwhile go give "Fußreise" a read.
what's the moral, here?
The lesson I take away from this is that Americans who live in places with cold winters are stupid, inconsiderate shits who don't take care of potentially dangerous surfaces on their property. Scrape down and salt your walkways, your driveways, and anywhere that's going to have foot traffic, for Christ's sakes. And yes, if necessary, stay up all night to deal with accumulation and slipperiness! Be vigilant! And think about your guests and neighbors!
Chicago: "Where's the money?"
Maybe prioritizing illegals over your own citizens was a bad idea. And now, karma is coming home to roost, just in time for the Democrat National Convention.
"Skinfolk aren't necessarily kinfolk," i.e., don't vote according to skin color.
Nick Freitas on the Harris talking points re: JD Vance
I'm still not totally sold on JD Vance. Sure, he's a decent public speaker, but I'm not feeling the charisma. (This may, in fact, be one of the reasons why Trump picked him. Having a second alpha on the ticket would make Trump look bad.) I'm slowly making my way through Vance's bestselling Hillbilly Elegy, and even several chapters in, the book feels like a PowerPoint presentation of local Kentucky/Ohio history, with some colorful characters (mainly Mamaw, Papaw, and some uncles) but no actual plot. It's not so much a narrative as a pastiche, a series of loosely connected thoughts and images. It's well written, at least from a proofreader's perspective: the English is clean, with few to no typos, so I can thank Cthulhu for that. Otherwise, it's kind of a plotless slog: I keep expecting the narrative to pick up speed and go somewhere. On the brighter side, Vance is proving not to be a pushover as Donald Trump's running mate, what with his comments about "childless cat ladies" and such. Mentally, Vance is fast on his feet. Despite this, the latest "point" being made by the Harris-led opposition is that Vance is "weird." Here's Nick Freitas on that.
UPDATE: "weird" really is a campaign strategy:
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
why not to trust AI
In the office today, I was working on material for a workbook. The vocabulary focus was on the word consequent, but used as a noun. The only example I could personally think of, for the nominal use of consequent, comes from the world of logical fallacies. The fallacy that came to mind is called affirming the consequent.
Wikipedia offers a technical explanation and example:
In propositional logic, affirming the consequent... is a formal fallacy of taking a true conditional statement (e.g., "if the lamp were broken, then the room would be dark") under certain assumptions (there are no other lights in the room, it is nighttime and the windows are closed), and invalidly inferring its converse ("the room is dark, so the lamp must be broken"), even though that statement may not be true under the same assumptions. This arises when the consequent ("the room would be dark") has other possible antecedents (for example, "the lamp is in working order, but is switched off" or "there is no lamp in the room").
My own example might be this pair of propositions:
If God existed, he would create an ordered universe.The universe is ordered; therefore God exists.
The universe could be ordered for completely natural reasons totally disconnected to God.
Anyway, more to the point: when I typed "consequent as a noun in a sentence" into Google, Google's new AI feature helpfully popped up to provide what it thought were good example sentences. Here's what the AI gave me:
The word consequent can be used as a noun to describe something that follows something else, with or without a causal relationship. Here are some examples of consequent used as a noun in a sentence:
- "The introduction of smart assistants such as Alexa has pioneered a new era of voice-search ubiquity and the consequent web accessibility".
- "It is typically found in shallow deposits and is mined, instead of drilled, with a consequent impact on the environment".
- "The consequent retraining led to lower operating efficiencies on new products".
I have a couple of complaints. One is the British punctuation (is Google's AI British?), placing the period outside of the quotation mark. While I happily concede that British punctuation makes more logical sense (I can explain that in a different post if you want), the Amurrican way is to tuck things like commas and periods inside the quotation marks. Like it or not. But my biggest complaint is that none of the above examples is what I asked for. In each case, the word consequent comes before a noun, obviously modifying that noun, which means that, in each case, consequent is being used as an adjective: consequent accessibility, consequent impact, consequent retraining. In each case, consequent is a modifier, not a substantive. This ain't no noun, and AI done fucked up.
Don't trust AI. It's artificial, but it's not intelligent.
EPILOGUE: I ended up ditching that entire vocab focus. Middle schoolers don't need to know how to use consequent as a noun when its application is that narrow and esoteric.
Venezuelan elections
Nicolas Maduro unsurprisingly "won" poverty-stricken Venezuela's latest elections, and the people aren't happy about it. I just read that some folks have toppled a statue of Hugo Chavez, whose socialismo Maduro inherited and doubled down upon (from chavismo to madurismo), plunging Venezuela ever deeper into the shitter. I'm hoping Venezuelans have had enough and will pull a Ceausescu on Maduro. Stay tuned. Just how enraged are the people? Enough to serve as a galvanizing example to spineless, cowardly, passive US conservatives?
UPDATE: a tweet from the above statue-toppling link says this in Spanish: Otra estatua del tirano Hugo Chávez es destruida por los venezolanos cansados de socialismo. Esta vez en Mariara, Carabobo. Basically, "Another statue of the tyrant Hugo Chavez is destroyed by Venezuelans tired of socialism. This time in Mariara, Carabobo." I hope socialist AOC is watching. Nobody wants your sick ideology, bitch.
weak and flabby
Congressional Panel Warns that the American Military Is No Longer “Prepared” to Fight in a Major War
The U.S. military is no longer “prepared” to fight in a major war, according to a new study conducted by a congressional panel.
Though the threats the U.S. is facing are “the most serious and most challenging” it has seen in almost a century, the U.S. defense base is not equipped to meet the moment, according to a report from the Commission on the National Defense Strategy published on Monday. Among the biggest problems outlined in the report are a troubled Pentagon and a failure by the federal government to properly address threats emanating from adversaries like China and Russia.
“The United States last fought a global conflict during World War II, which ended nearly 80 years ago. The nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago. It is not prepared today,” the commission’s report reads. “The United States is still failing to act with the urgency required, across administrations and without regard to governing party. This report proposes a new approach to spur the speed and scale of change.”
The congressionally established and bipartisan commission, made up of high-level defense and national security experts, is tasked with assessing the U.S. defense strategies and providing recommendations to Congress and the Pentagon. The most current report from the commission was created in part by the RAND Corporation, which provided “analytic, administrative, editorial, and publication support.”
Both China and Russia are bolstering their military capacity while working closer with one another, creating a looming threat from two of the world’s largest superpowers, the report reads. This relationship has also welcomed other American adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea.
America on Biden's watch is basically turning into me. Nice.
last hurrah (8 days ago)
When you run out of burger buns but still have hot-dog buns:
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| cheeseburger "dog" and pulled-pork mini-hero |
Monday, July 29, 2024
Ana still seems red-pilled
Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks still seems red-pilled, but I don't think she's quite ready to join the dark side yet. It's coming, though—some sort of divorce between her and Cenk Uygur.
Olympic shenanigans
I haven't watched a single second of the Paris Olympics. Who on Earth would choose the city of Paris as a site for Olympic games? (I guess the same people who would choose Seoul. Or Los Angeles.) I've heard about the opening ceremony, though—the pagan mockery of the last Supper and all that.* I also saw that the South Korean team, when it came out, was mistakenly billed as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, i.e., North Korea. The ROK got its revenge, though, in women's archery. Take that, Japan, and you supposed Zen archers. You suck! South Korea is the land of the Legolasses (Scots Legolassies)!
__________
*It's tempting to say that this is just the French being French, tastelessly flaunting their Frenchness to/at the world. But I see this as a leftist power play, a reminder to people like Marine Le Pen of who's still in the driver's seat, and it ain't her.
coup in progress
Coup Upon Coup Upon Coup (Victor Davis Hanson)
In March 2020, all the major Democratic primary candidates abruptly, mysteriously, and in near unison withdrew from the presidential race, ceding the nomination to Joe Biden.
Yet Biden had lost the first three races in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada—and only won his first victory in South Carolina.
Suddenly, on the eve of the Super Tuesday mega-primaries, the candidacies of front-runner Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and others simply evaporated.
The fear of a front-runner Sanders’ socialist victory and nomination—and thus an enviable landslide loss to incumbent Donald Trump in the general election—had prompted the donor class and shadowy political insiders to act.
And they did so by choosing a perceived moderate, old Joe Biden from Scranton. That required the coerced departures of all his far-left rivals, who had hitherto performed much better than Biden in the primaries.
Now front-runner Biden still displayed obvious symptoms of serious cognitive decline that had only seemed to mount through the 2020 campaign. And his dementia continued to accelerate during his first three years as president.
Biden had deceitfully promised to conduct a healing campaign and a unifying presidency. But once in the White House, his extreme agendas proved the most divisive and far-left in nearly a century.
[ ... ]
Democrats demonized anyone critical of Biden’s obvious mental decline. Their smearing crested during Biden’s now-aborted 2024 reelection bid, even as Biden could no longer display even a veneer of mental and physical engagement.
Polls revealed an impending Trump landslide victory in November—and a massive Democratic loss of Congress.
So suddenly on a Sunday, July 21—just days left before state ballots were formalized with the names of the parties’ official nominees, and on the eve of the Democratic convention—party bosses, mega-donors, and Obama puppeteers went into action for yet a third time.
They reportedly threatened candidate Biden with a complete loss of any further campaign funding and raised the specter of invoking the 25th Amendment to end his presidency—should he not suddenly withdraw from the race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as his surrogate on the ticket.
In one moment, the choices of nearly 15 million Biden primary voters were vitiated. No delegates were consulted. No other alternative Democrat candidates were even considered.
Biden was dethroned; Harris was coronated—without much public input or even knowledge of how or why.
There's more. Read the rest.
Ben Shapiro versus Eric Swalwell
Representative Eric Swalwell is known for farting on camera and having repeated sex with a Chinese spy. Why he's still in office ought to be a mystery to me, but I know why he's still there. Here's Swalwell at a congressional hearing, trying to outwit Ben Shapiro. Shapiro is not my favorite person, but he can run intellectual circles around Swalwell.
a dose of reality
There are plenty of black folks whom I respect and admire. Those who love Kamala simply because she's a "person of color" are not among them.
this is making the rounds
For once, I'm thankful for how far AI has come.
This is amazing 😂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 26, 2024
pic.twitter.com/KpnBKGUUwn
Sunday, July 28, 2024
PJW thinks Labour's already heading over the cliff
Paul Joseph Watson on how Labour, which recently swamped UK elections, is now releasing criminals earlier than their sentences say to release them. One pedophile (sorry—paedophile) will be released after serving only 7 years of a 13-year sentence. Watch:
a Trump non-lie
CBS lies about Trump lying pic.twitter.com/GLmm8u6Mqr
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 26, 2024
I guess the counterargument is that, in the above tweet, Harris never claims to have donated herself. That's logically possible: maybe she really didn't donate anything. But as a matter of psychology, how often is it that a person will post a link to a donate-funds site without there being the strong implication that that person him-/herself also donated? Am I wrong to think Harris' tweet carries an implied "Do what I did!"? Is Harris even wackier than we thought, urging donations while not donating herself? If Harris were asked point-blank in a debate whether she had, in fact, donated to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, would she stand proudly by her donation, or would she run from her actions and deny what she had done? A lot of Harris's problem comes down to her inconsistencies. As district attorney of San Francisco, she locked black people up left and right for crimes as small as marijuana possession. She then kept some prisoners beyond their sentences to use them as free labor—essentially slave labor. Tulsi Gabbard brought all of this up in 2020; none of these facts are new or recent.
Right now, Harris may be enjoying a slight honeymoon-period boost in polls, to the point where the lying media are saying that Trump voters are deserting Trump for Harris (ha!), but that honeymoon will fade in a few weeks, and I can only hope that reality will reassert itself, especially among independents, who already can't stand Harris for the most part. And yeah, she really does cackle like a hyena. She's also a bona fide idiot. Even the left thought so once, before they started to carry water for her.
you may (or may not) have noticed
A Kevin's Walk 8 link is now on the right-hand sidebar, as part of that list of walk blogs at the top of the sidebar. Click hard and often.
why are some Europeans so stupid?
Sure, there are stupid people everywhere, but watch this:
Keep bringing in the illegals and committing cultural suicide!
rainy day, visit to Insa-dong
I've been slowly prepping a care package for a friend who's on the verge of getting her doctorate degree. I made her an etched glass plaque, and I'm shamelessly sticking some merch into her care package: a 2023 Kevin's Walk tee shirt (I'm guessing she's a medium) and a copy of my tiny book (or booklet), Think Like a Teacher. I also drew her two little brush-art pictures: one of my crazy, laughing horse; and one of Dalma-daesa (Bodhidharma) which, admittedly, is not my best work, but that'll do, pig; that'll do.
I wanted to make the brush art into scrolls, so I went to Insa-dong, the touristy art district, Saturday afternoon. The sky couldn't decide whether it wanted to clear up or piss down hard; I got a bit of both, but I kept my art well protected from the weather. The old scrollmaker's place I had visited years ago was long gone; I found another shop devoted to a variety of arts and crafts. It was run by a friendly old couple, and I was told the scrolls would cost me W70,000 apiece to make (I paid on the spot), and that I could pick them up late next week, around Friday. I get the impression that the scrolls aren't put together on site; the store seemed to be exclusively for selling wares; any atelier was probably somewhere outside of Insa-dong.
There's little else to do with this care package, which is almost totally prepped and ready to be sent out with a "Don't open until graduation!" warning. I hope my old friend, whom I haven't seen in decades, appreciates the gifts.
Before I forget: the distaff half of the old couple is a talented artist. She showed me one of her pieces, which looked a bit like a collage done in a style that married traditional imagery with modern techniques. It was amazing work, and I felt a bit ashamed coming into her shop so presumptuously to talk about getting my cartoonish brush art turned into scrolls. She complimented my images, but I think she was just being polite. My scribbles don't hold a candle to what she produced. I didn't think to do it on Saturday, but next week, if I remember, I'll try to get a photograph of her work when I pick my scrolls up. Part of me wanted to buy the lady's work then and there, but it wouldn't have been cheap. It's not so much that I admired her work (truth be told, I did admire it) as that I was humbled by it.
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Steele on The Steal
All reasonable arguments about how The Steal occurred, but will the doubters and gaslighters listen? No. They're invested in convincing you that nothing went wrong in 2020, and it was a perfectly kosher election. You're the one who's crazy!
Trump vs. Nayib Bukele
Former president Donald Trump has lately said that he'd cut off aid to El Salvador if illegals kept coming to the US from that country. President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has this reply (watch with closed captions if, like me, you don't speak enough Spanish to understand):
What Bukele is saying strikes me as reasonable. Ultimately, if you want the illegal migration to end, the countries that migrants are fleeing need to become places where people don't feel the need to leave.* On that score, several things have to happen at once. One is that American aid to these smaller governments probably has to continue, so I would disagree with Trump's stance and side more with Bukele. Second, Bukele (just as an example) needs to bust his ass and do way more than lock up gang members if he wants to stop El Salvadorans from fleeing his country. Rebuild the economy on a free-market template, avoid the temptation to do the stereotypical Latin-socialism thing, follow the example of Javier Milei, and turn El Salvador into an economic powerhouse. It can be done: South Korea is a tiny country, but it's in the top ten or fifteen economically, punching way above its weight. Korea does this, though, because it places a high value on both education and skills—something El Salvador will need to do if it hopes to drag itself out of the mire.
Where Bukele goes wrong, though, is in his contention that "walls don't work." Ask the Israelis how they'd be doing without walls to hold the barbarians back. Ask anyone who lives in a house with walls whether they'd trade their residence for a thatched hut open to the wind and rain and unsavory people. The reason the US/Mexico border wall didn't get very far during Trump's term is primarily that a cohort of Never Trump Republicans stood in its way. Too many of those scum-suckers are still around on Capitol Hill; if it were me, I'd declare a dictatorship and have fire teams purge every single one of those fuckers, which is probably why it's a good thing I'm not in charge. But should Trump win again this November, I expect the obstructionism from both Democrats and Republicans to continue. Anyway, should Trump manage to find a way to fund the completion of the wall (which, realistically, won't be completed by the end of his hypothetical second term), we'd see a drastic reduction in all the country-destroying illegal border-crossings.
In the meantime, Bukele isn't wrong to suggest that his and other Latin countries need to make their lands more palatable, more habitable, so as to cut down on the desire to leave. I think Trump is wrong to threaten (not that he's currently in any position to threaten anything) the withholding of aid to El Salvador. But maybe he sees something in Bukele that I'm not picking up on. I know a lot of leftists are upset with Bukele's attitude and actions: they call him a strongman, a Putin-like authoritarian, for his ruthless treatment of gang members. For the moment, at least, I'm not sympathetic to these wild-eyed accusers. You need to move strongly and with conviction when you're cleaning up gangs. But even after the gang problem becomes manageable, El Salvador has a host of other problems to deal with—many related to authoritarianism (see this resource, which gives the left's perspective).
__________
*According to the revamped view of Kamala Harris, this is what she spent her time doing, not "border czaring." She was looking into root causes of migration, see? She'd better have data and stats at the ready when it's time for the debate.
"Star Trek: The Motion Picture," 2022 Director's Cut: review
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| L to R: Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Kirk (William Shatner), and McCoy (DeForest Kelley) |
"Star Trek: The Motion Picture" came out in 1979, riding the science-fiction wave created by the megahit "Star Wars" (1977). Leonard Nimoy's second autobiography, I Am Spock, has a chapter in it explicitly titled, "Thank You, George Lucas"—a tip of the hat to the man whose movie made studios reconsider science fiction as a plausibly bankable filmic genre. This would set up a friendly (and sometimes unfriendly) fandom rivalry that would parallel the rivalry between Marvel Comics and DC, and that continues to this day.
At the time of its original release, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" earned a lukewarm reception from crowds and critics who were simultaneously happy to see their favorite sci-fi characters on the big screen but disappointed by the slow, plodding, ponderous story of an old spacecraft from Earth that had fulfilled its data-collecting mission just a little too well. In 2001, a digitally remastered director's cut of the movie came out and was more warmly received by critics than the original theatrical release. In 2022, as part of a 55th-anniversary commemoration (that really began in 2021), more audiovisual touches to the film were added in the spirit of director Robert Wise's desire to make a movie worthy of his vision. I just watched the 2022 director's cut last night. If the name Robert Wise isn't familiar to you: he's the gent who also directed "The Sound of Music" and "West Side Story."
It is the twenty-third century. Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), back from commanding his five-year mission, has risen in the ranks to become an admiral, and he is now tied to a desk. Science officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy), a child of two worlds, is on his father's home planet of Vulcan, where he is about to go through the Kolinahr ritual to purge the remnants of emotion still simmering in his psyche. In Klingon space, a small squadron of Klingon warships moves to intercept an immense alien cloud. They attack the cloud with photon torpedoes, which the alien easily absorbs before retaliating with its own energy projectiles—crackling, coruscating spheres that both destroy the Klingon vessels and absorb them into the cloud as data. The nearby Terran space station Epsilon Nine witnesses this brief conflict and transmits information to Starfleet Command before it, too, is absorbed and destroyed. The cloud is on a direct heading for Earth. Kirk, frustrated at having become a desk jockey and eager to return to space, leverages the approach of the menacing alien cloud to reinstall himself as captain of the Enterprise, which is undergoing a major redesign and refit under the supervision of Captain Willard Decker (Stephen Collins) and Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott (James Doohan). Decker is none too happy to find himself temporarily demoted to the rank of commander and the role of first officer aboard what is essentially a brand-new ship that he knows better than Kirk does. When Vulcan science officer Sonak is killed in a freak transporter accident, Decker is also tasked with the role of science officer.
Kirk knows that the Enterprise's refit is days away from being complete, that simulated test runs still need to be done on the warp drive and other systems, but with the cloud reaching Earth in a little over two standard days, Kirk pushes the Enterprise's departure time to twelve hours from his arrival on board despite the dangers of rushing what is supposed to be a careful and thorough process. The rest of the original bridge crew is there to greet Kirk: communications officer Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), helmsman Sulu (George Takei), and weapons officer Chekov (Walter Koenig). Even Nurse Chapel (Majel Barrett)—now Doctor Chapel—is back and eager to work with McCoy, who says he doesn't want another MD around second-guessing his diagnoses. Joining Sulu at the front console is navigations officer Ilia (Persis Khambatta), a Deltan. In the novelized version of the story, we discover that Deltans look human, but they emit powerful pheromones that can drive an undisciplined male human into a sexual frenzy. Kirk, despite being known for his many amorous exploits, seems unaffected by Ilia's presence, and Ilia reassures Kirk that her oath of celibacy is on record. Chekov and Sulu, however, have very brief moments where they look unwontedly horny. Deltans are, despite their sexual attractiveness, known to be loyal and exclusively committed mates, and it turns out that Ilia has a history with now-Commander Decker.
The Enterprise launches, but because of a matter/antimatter imbalance in the warp drive (not enough time to run those simulations), the starship creates a wormhole that also sucks a random asteroid into itself, where it threatens to impact the Enterprise. Kirk orders Chekov to fire phasers to destroy the asteroid, but Decker yells to belay that order and use photon torpedoes. The strategy works, and when Kirk later questions Decker on why he countermanded Kirk's phaser order, Decker explains that the redesigned Enterprise increases phaser strength by routing power through the engines. Since the engine imbalance is what caused the wormhole, the phasers would have been nonfunctional, hence the need to use torpedoes. Kirk is abashed and thanks Decker for his timely actions, which saved the ship. As the Enterprise safely drops out of warp and begins to repair its engines, a mysterious courier vessel appears, approaches the Enterprise, and drops off a single passenger: Mr. Spock, who did not complete the Kolinahr ritual because he felt an immense consciousness calling out from space, emanating from the same cloud now bearing down on Earth. Spock is unusually frosty toward everyone, but with his genius intellect, he is able to help Scotty repair the warp engines' matter/antimatter imbalance, allowing the Enterprise to be on its way. And in another blow to poor Decker, Spock's commission is reactivated, and he resumes his traditional position as science officer, leaving Decker solely in the role of first officer.
The rest of the movie plays out a lot like the final part of "2001: A Space Odyssey," with the Enterprise meeting and entering the cloud, moving toward the massive entity's innermost workings. The journey is quiet, eerie, and phantasmagorical, and in the end, the crew discovers that the entity, which calls itself "V'Ger" (pronounced "VEE-jerr"), is none other than a 300-year-old Voyager 6 probe, sent out by Earth to collect data. A fall through a black hole brought V'Ger to a planet inhabited by living machines that enhanced the probe, turning it into a superpowerful data collector, able to simultaneously destroy objects and record them. As it went along, acquiring a universe's worth of knowledge, V'Ger became sentient and began to wonder at its purpose, and while its mind was dominated by pure logic, it began to experience one overriding desire: to meet and join with its creator. In reading V'Ger's mind, Spock discovers that V'Ger is motivated by the sorts of existential questions that drive organic life: Is this all that I am? Is there nothing more? The search for the creator, then, is a search for ultimate meaning and transcendence. Because V'Ger is a machine consciousness enhanced by machine consciousnesses, its prejudice is toward machine life, and it initially doesn't recognize humans and aliens as "real" life forms, seeing them instead as infestations aboard the starships that V'Ger sees as real. Kirk's biggest hurdle, upon learning all of this, is convincing V'Ger that human beings had created it, and that if it wanted a sense of fulfillment, it would have to evolve. V'Ger had been interacting with the Enterprise crew through a humanoid probe based on the form of Lieutenant Ilia, whom V'Ger had assimilated. Decker, understanding the needs of the moment and responding to his own need for fulfillment, agrees to meld with V'Ger through the Ilia-probe. We see a fantastical light show as the melding happens, and the threat against Earth disappears, and we're given to understand that V'Ger—and possibly humanity as well—has undertaken the next step in its evolution. This was a birth, with V'Ger now free to create its own sense of purpose instead of fulfilling the imperatives of its antiquated programming.
"Star Trek: The Motion Picture" has its heart in the right place. It's driven by a thinking man's story, with all the usual big-picture, ultimate-meaning philosophical questions about what it means to be human, what it means to be alive, and what attracts an intelligent conscious mind. It's also consistent with the spirit of the original TV series, being a voyage of discovery leading to an encounter with a new form of life. It's also a movie that's very much in love with the redesigned Enterprise. Later critics have referred to this aspect of the film, with its slow flybys, as "starship porn." An early scene has Kirk in a large-windowed shuttle while Scotty lovingly pilots the craft around the new Enterprise, giving Kirk a chance to drink it all in from every angle. Another thing the movie does right is in how it reassembles the main cast, many of whom—like Kirk and Spock—have gone on to seemingly bigger and better things, only to discover that there was no fulfillment to be found in those pursuits. V'Ger, as the thing closest to an antagonist, is massive and mysterious: a complex core surrounded by an energy cloud two astronomical units wide* (an AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance from the earth to the sun, about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers). It's interesting to watch the progression as the Enterprise moves into the innards of the alien entity, from wispy outer cloud to weird and vastly undulating inner workings to creepy data-storage areas where Spock, flying outside the Enterprise on his own private tour of V'Ger's guts, sees a host of recorded stars, planets, galaxies... and a ghostly simulacrum of Ilia herself. The movie is brimming with heady images and ideas. And the thing that carries the movie throughout its 132-minute run time is Jerry Goldsmith's excellent, ambitious, and now-iconic score, which got appropriated by the TV series "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
But this was a rushed, flawed production, and complaints about the movie have accumulated over the years. There's the lack of chemistry among the main cast, with only DeForest Kelley standing out for some of his funnier and more emotional lines. Otherwise, it's not just Spock who's frosty toward everyone: the entire bridge crew seems rather distant, drab, and unemotional. William Shatner's acting betrays its trademark stiffness and over-the-top quality, an awkward remnant of his stage work as a classically trained Shakespearean actor. Line deliveries from the rest of the cast are often stilted, pretentious, and over-pronounced, frequently matching the ponderous pace of the movie—a pacing that hasn't been improved in the 2022 director's cut. And while the musical score is awesome, some of the movie's other auditory highlights border on the bizarre and the corny. Jerry Goldsmith invented an instrument called the Blaster Beam to create the weird sound effect, like a vibrating twang, that we hear every time we see the V'Ger cloud. In my opinion, this effect didn't age very well, and I recall disliking the sound even as a kid in 1979. Another auditory nightmare was the synthesizer-generated "burbling" noises at the heart of V'Ger, which I suppose were meant to convey the idea of V'Ger thinking to itself. People behind the scenes speak of Robert Wise with great respect, but if "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" is any evidence, he's not very imaginative in his use of cameras—favoring long, slow tracking shots and wholly conventional pans—and he doesn't seem interested in pushing his actors to their peak. Nicholas Meyer does a much better job, in all respects, with "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan."
There's also the matter of the digital remastering and other tweaks done to create the 2022 version of the film. Some documentaries I saw on YouTube showed filmmakers claiming that this new version was what Robert Wise would have wanted to make had he had the time, money, and especially the digital resources. In these same documentaries, examples of improved visuals are shown, and all of this is what tempted me to buy the 2022 version in the first place. Watching the film for myself, though, proved to be something else entirely. I had thought that the crew working on the 2022 version would clean up all of the old, poor-quality effects and replace them with digitally superior sounds and images. But from what I saw, most of the bad stuff from 1979 was left in. Black matte lines around starships, free-floating astronauts, and shuttlecraft remain to distract us. The exterior shots of Kirk and Scotty inside their shuttlecraft still look oddly warped. A scene in Kirk's ready room with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy has a painfully artificial, unfinished, sloppy look to it. Meanwhile, the added shots from the 2020s—the ones that clarified what V'Ger's core looks like—didn't feel necessary to me. And I suppose nothing could be done digitally to improve the awful acting of the entire bridge crew during the accidental-wormhole scene. One scene was only partially improved: the one in which V'Ger sends a lightning-like probe to the Enterprise's bridge to collect data from the ship's memory banks. In the original version, as the probe moves across our field of vision, it's obvious that the probe itself is the special-effects dividing line between the left and right halves of the screen... and those halves are poorly aligned. Once you see this, you can't unsee it. In the new version, this misalignment has been minimized but not erased, which I found hugely disappointing. Watching the "improved" version of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was as frustrating as watching George Lucas's "improved" editions of the original Star Wars movies: so much that Lucas ought to have cleaned up never got cleaned up.
If we had time machines, I would recommend some changes to the story based on slightly better storytelling and characterization standards, which have evolved since the 70s. First is the elephant in the room: the interactions among the crew members all need to be less stiff and more natural. Second is costume design—although the uniforms in "Star Trek II" would turn out to be a vast improvement over this film's drab, pale blues and grays and beiges and whites. Third is the need to give the less major bridge-crew members more to do (by "Star Trek III," this aspect of characterization had much improved). One missed opportunity was in the scene where V'Ger fires its destroying/absorbing projectile weapon at the Enterprise, which survives the first blow thanks to its vastly improved shielding. Unable to survive a second such attack, the ship relies on Spock to think up a solution. Spock realizes that V'Ger's processing power and communication speed are so fast that entire encyclopedias of information have in fact, been communicated, but in only a millisecond. Capitalizing on this realization, Spock decides to retransmit the same friendship hailing signals they had been sending, but orders of magnitude faster so that V'Ger can understand them. V'Ger fires a second deadly projectile, and in a tense moment, Spock transmits the sped-up hail just in time for the projectile to disappear, doing no further harm to the ship. To my mind, the way to fix this scene would be to make the data-transmission job a two-part relay between Spock and Uhura. Spock figures out what V'Ger needs in order to understand the Enterprise crew; Uhura, grasping the situation immediately, says "I'll take it from here; just gimme the data to transmit," then she works her communications-officer voodoo on V'Ger, ending the threat in the nick of time. Surprised by Uhura's speed and precision, Spock is impressed despite himself; he and Uhura share a look. Teamwork. Job well done. And that interplay would have legitimized the Spock/Uhura romance in JJ Abrams's version of the Trek universe. Spock is attracted to Uhura's nimble, capable mind. I'd have gotten behind that kind of girl-boss moment. Uhura in classic Trek is often given short shrift, but she's the communications officer, and one of the central themes of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" is nothing less than communication. The more I think about it, the more I think Uhura really should have been a much bigger part of this story. The first season of "Strange New Worlds" gives its version of Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) a chance to show how her linguistic talents allow her to approach difficult situations from unexpected angles. Without a doubt, Nichelle Nichols deserved a chance for her character to shine that way, too.
I would also change the nature of V'Ger somewhat. V'Ger, as written, betrays some of the same screenwriterly inconsistencies that we see in the portrayal of Vulcans. In the classic lore, Vulcans aren't incapable of emotion; they're actually fiercely passionate, and the only way out of their genocidal past was for one philosopher, Surak, to arise and show the race a more peaceable path to enlightenment and fulfillment through the disciplined application of logic. But despite their supposed mastery of emotions, Vulcans are often shown desiring things, with curiosity being a particularly powerful form of desire. Vulcans are insatiably curious, and Spock sees V'Ger as a kindred intellect because it, too, wants to know everything. But Spock also claims that V'Ger is a being of surpassingly pure logic, which is inconsistent with V'Ger's lightning-filled, ship-shaking "tantrum" when Kirk refuses to disclose information about the "creator" toward the end of the movie. V'Ger also threatens to destroy all life on Earth, which doesn't seem logical at all. There are also the typical AI and philosophy-of-mind questions about how the simple collection of knowledge can give rise to consciousness—a folk idea that one often stumbles upon in older, less sophisticated science fiction. This is like collecting sand and expecting the sand grains to improbably assemble themselves into a complex sculpture. There should have been more in the script to flesh out how V'Ger gained consciousness. Perhaps mind was a gift from the world of living machines who perceived and understood V'Ger's basic purpose: Know all that is knowable. How the sentient V'Ger explored the vast cosmos for centuries and never realized that organic life was legitimately real is also beyond my comprehension. The writers really could have done a better job.
In all, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" is a bit like the child that only a mother can love. People who don't appreciate the Trek franchise would probably end up bored to death if they tried to watch this movie, and even Trek loyalists will usually admit that, if they like "The Motion Picture," it's a warts-and-all kind of liking. No one is really hailing this as a masterpiece, and even with the supposed improvements (some improvements, like lighting and color grading, are too subtle for a Joe Schmoe viewer like me to notice without it being pointed out in some documentary), the basic story remains the same flawed, clunky basic story. I won't go so far as to say that the movie is a slog; it's not, and part of me has a bit of a soft spot for it. But compared to a Meisterwerk like "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," this movie does not rank high on the Trek totem pole. As with many films that I like but can never quite love, this one is a bundle of missed opportunities, and a sentimental favorite only for some.
__________
*In redoing the audio track for the movie, someone must have realized that the original dialogue needed to be changed. In the 1979 version of the movie, we hear that the cloud is eighty-two AUs in diameter, which would make the outermost reaches of V'Ger's being twice as large as the average diameter of the distance from the sun to Pluto. For dramatic purposes, this would make V'Ger preposterously large: an object that big wouldn't so much enter our solar system as destroy it. So in the 2022 director's cut, the audio has been changed to give V'Ger a more plausible—but still awesome—size. 2AU is big.
new walk tee—now ready
The new walk-tee design is now ready for sale. The "403 km in 20 days" line feels a little cringey: anyone can do the math and see that that averages out to only a bit more than 20 km a day, which isn't much. Between you and me, though: I'm taking six break days because quite a few of those segments are actually over 30 km in length. My longest segment is, in fact, 40 km. I've done longer, but that's still a pretty big chunk for an unathletic guy to do in a day. So 403 km over 14 walking days (plus I'll be walking on my "off" days as well) averages out to 28.8 km, which is a bit more impressive for the regular folks. For you pampered people who've been following these walks, you know that 28 or 29 km isn't that big of a deal.
Meanwhile, go get yourself a tee!
Friday, July 26, 2024
Biden: collapse and aftermath
How it began, and where we are now:
Jon Stewart loses faith in Biden:
Black woman used as prop is ignored by Biden, causing yet more resentment:
The dam starts to break:
More demands for Biden to step down:
Humor: Joe Biden versus Joe Biden:
Styx on Biden losing Adam Schiff:
A "medical situation" as an excuse to step down?
Vince Dao on Biden getting COVID and possibly dropping out:
Styx: Obama leans on Biden to pressure him to quit:
Styx meditates on whether Biden will drop out:
Styx on the "palace intrigue":
Red Eagle Politics on Biden's having dropped out:
The Trump campaign responds to Biden's dropping out with a Kamala ad:
Liberal Hivemind thinks Biden's seeming endorsement of Kamala is an FU to the party that pushed him out:
Humor: Kamala addresses the nation:
Styx: "It's Joever":
Frankly, I don't like that spelling, and everyone's using it. When I see "Joever," I mentally pronounce it "Jo-ever." Write it as "Jover." It makes more phonetic sense.
Styx sees the Dems as collapsing spectacularly:
I think any talk of "collapse" needs to account for the way these things are pendular in nature. In time, it'll be the GOP's turn to collapse as well. Nothing lasts forever.
Is Biden feeling betrayed as fellow Dems maneuver around him?
Biden's own staff only found out about Biden's dropping out via Twitter:
So a major issue is one alluded to in those memes I'd published recently—was Joe even aware that he was going to be ousted? Because that seems to be what's happening: Biden probably didn't consent to the whole "tell them I'm bowing out" strategy. Just the day before, he'd been insisting he would be staying in the race. So he either succumbed to all the pressure, or people did an end run around him and published "his" letter and "his" Kamala-endorsing tweet without his permission. People are saying that, when you step down from a race, you normally go on camera and make the announcement. As the memes say, there's no way to know, currently, whether Biden consented to any of this. The irony, of course, is that the Democrats keep braying about how they're trying to defend democracy but, just like in 2016 when they brusquely shoved Bernie Sanders aside, they're acting in undemocratic, behind-closed-doors fashion. Or maybe Biden will come out and make an on-camera announcement that, yes, this was all his idea, and he'd had a sudden change of heart. So the next question, then, is why Biden would bother to finish out his term. If he's not going to be running for a second term, it must be because of infirmity or incapacity, both of which would make him incapable of holding the office he now (fraudulently) holds. But I can imagine the Dem rationale for keeping Biden in the Oval Office as long as possible: he can still pardon people like his fuckup of a son Hunter, and he can push out or at least rubber-stamp one last slew of executive orders that will make Trump's life hell as Trump is forced to waste time undoing everything—sort of a petulant "break all the toys before leaving" gesture.
UPDATE: Biden is, as you know, out, and Kamala is his likely replacement on the ticket, but that hasn't quite been finalized yet. The above thoughts and speculations, despite being slightly outdated, still apply. Be thankful Kamala's not officially president right now.
Lex Fridman and Joe Rogan
Lex Fridman on the attempted assassination:
Jill Biden as a secret Trump fan:
"selfless"
They've been given their orders, and they're all marching to the same tune.
ADDENDUM: more marching orders:
Amala also reacts to the marching orders.
"Obama Not Endorsing Harris"
True?
Obama Not Endorsing Harris, Doesn’t Believe She Can Beat Trump: Report
Oh, goody! Our very own A Game of Thrones!Barack Obama has not endorsed Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee because he doesn’t believe she can beat Donald Trump either, according to a New York Post report citing Biden family sources.
“Obama’s very upset because he knows she can’t win,” the source claims, adding “Obama knows she’s just incompetent — the border czar who never visited the border, saying that all migrants should have health insurance. She cannot navigate the landmines that are ahead of her.”
The report also claims Obama is not happy with Joe Biden going rogue and endorsing Harris.
The source further claims that Obama was deeply involved with getting Biden to step down, and that the George Clooney op ed published in the New York Times calling for Biden to quit was basically all Obama’s doing.
The source also states that Obama is high on Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, which dovetails with previous claims that he is being prepared by the top brass as the nominee over Harris.
The Biden family source also told the Post that Harris will also fail in a debate against Trump.
“Wait until the debate… She can’t debate. She’s going to put her foot in her mouth about Israel, Palestine, Ukraine. She’s going to say something really stupid,” they stated.
about Biden's speech
A Confused Joe Biden Gives Address to the Nation, Only Deepens the Scandal Around Him and Kamala Harris
After several very confusing days, Joe Biden finally emerged on Wednesday after dropping out of the presidential race over the weekend. Appearing very frail, the president addressed the nation from the Oval Office in what was billed as an explanation of why he abruptly stepped aside as the Democratic Party nominee.
Unfortunately, though perhaps expectedly, Biden provided no real information at all. In fact, his clearly deteriorating condition, combined with the things he said, only served to deepen the scandal around him and Kamala Harris. Who is actually the president? Why is he remaining in office if he can't run for a second term?
To illustrate the absurdity at play, Biden essentially argued that he's such an amazing president and so capable of serving a second term that he dropped out to "unite my party." None of this makes any sense.
When you read between the lines, it sounds like he's admitting the big donors and power brokers, including Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, forced him out of the race. If his record was truly so stellar, and he was as capable of serving a second term as he says, why would his own party not be united around him? And why wouldn't he be the best person to "save our democracy?"
This is insulting to American voters. Biden owed them an honest explanation for why he suddenly changed course and left the presidential race, negating tens of millions of primary votes in the process. Instead, he chose to continue to gaslight the nation, pretending that he is perfectly healthy to serve but also needs to drop out for completely unspecified reasons.
Of course, we all know the truth. He dropped out because he's physically and mentally incapable of being the president today or four years from now.
As a final bit of red meat to the Democrat base, Biden then endorsed term limits for the Supreme Court.
Nothing says democracy and fighting tyranny like working to change the make-up of a court that rules against your wishes. That's the stuff of third-world dictatorships, and it was promoted from the Oval Office. Disgusting is a good descriptor.
With that said, this address did nothing to quell the questions surrounding Biden's health and those who have and continue to enable him, chief among them Kamala Harris. She needs to be made to own this because she does own it.
Did you watch the video of the speech? I got the feeling that Styx might be right: Biden sounded stroked out, slurred words and all. As a stroke victim who had trouble speaking clearly after I got out of the hospital, I should know. With Biden, that didn't sound like a COVID problem to me: I think he really did suffer a medical emergency in Las Vegas, and that that emergency was a stroke. Why it required him to get treated all the way across the country, I have no idea and won't speculate. But as the article points out, there's a lot here that makes no sense, mainly because it's not tied together with a simple why. If there's one thing I've come to realize, though—and this applies to both sides of the aisle—politics is the art of never admitting anything. Answers to essential questions are never forthcoming, but they might grudgingly surface decades later when they no longer matter.
Kimberly Cheatle, the now-former director of the Secret Service, wasted the people's time and money dodging easy, obvious, straightforward questions posed by the rightie (and some leftie) elements in Congress. As I may have said before, there ought to be a rule in place for anyone who comes before Congress and stonewalls: if the questioners are unsatisfied that their questions have been answered, then the one being questioned, having proved his or her uselessness, should immediately be taken out to the nearest courtyard to be summarily drawn and quartered. That should be the price of stonewalling—Democrat or Republican. This has nothing to do with Fifth Amendment protections; Cheatle, for example, was never asked to incriminate herself, but it's obvious that honest answers would have revealed the rot in the Secret Service—the desperate need to eliminate DEI policies, jettison leftist agendas, reprioritize merit and proficiency, and revamp the entire organization so it can do a competent job of protecting the executives it's tasked to protect. (Trump, meanwhile, needs to beef up his personal security detail.)
Cheatle is but one example of the rot in Biden's administration. The Swamp runs deep, and even if Trump is reelected, he will be unable to drain even a hundredth of it during his final four years. If, by some malign miracle, Kamala Harris becomes our next "president," we can expect the Swamp only to expand and deepen.
stop going outdoors!
I have asked the Secret Service to stop letting people shoot former presidents in the head. https://t.co/Wdf4yOMVwI
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) July 23, 2024
Thursday, July 25, 2024
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