Eat The New Shit, Same As The Old Shit

Critical Theory, Crashes And Burns

Years ago, when Critical Theory started creeping into everything, academics were the first  roll over like pet dogs for this stuff. Even in universities, the students were probably more incredulous about Critical Theory than the tutors who were busy buying into this stuff, hoping to advance their careers. In my case, I was a little fortunate in two ways. One was that this stuff came to me first via my band mate Pharmakeus who was already an Arts Faculty grad, and so passingly well-versed in the argumentation of these Pos-t-Modern thinkers from France. The second dose came via my time spent playing hooky from med School and hanging out with my old school chum who allowed me to witness the absurdity of Derrida-added 'deconstruction' being applied to architecture where the main purpose is to construction. 

As the 1980s gave way to the 1990s and my bent towards the Arts deepened, I found myself at Film School and being force-fed a lot of this kind of French thinker branded argumentation in screen analysis classes. The problem of course is there's a great gap between what can be read from a  text and how to go about staging something for the camera. The accepted wisdom of those espousing Critical Theory was  the ultimate authority over the text resided wit the reader, even if they were misreading it, and authorial intent was no more than a delusion of just one view point amongst a multitude. 

I won't argue with people who want this to be true, but if you want to direct a film - any film - you're going to have to carry intent on to set and aim to achieve something in the camera. You have to exercise a tremendous level of focus, and determination to bring this about because film making as it were, has a multitude of ways of going wrong. And when it goes wrong, you can't count on the audience to misread your text in your favour. That's just not how this shit goes. Contrary to all the screen analysis classes we got, film-making is a decidedly Modernist enterprise. 

That said, it's good to know what critics think and how they go a bout their job of manufacturing public opinion. Let me remind you, the average critic sucks for this reason, and the more they lean into critical Theory to come up with value judgements that seem to defy common sense, you come to realise how bankrupt this business of Critical Theory can get. But that's just my experience. Most people would have experienced this as one year we're making homophobic jokes and bullying trans people, and then we're the ones being bullied around by the notion of political correctness.  

Don't look now but I think the majority of Americans just voted to end that shit. Except, they're just replacing that shit with another load of fresh shit of a different animal. 

Incels Go Political

It goes without saying a candidate like Kamala Harris is unlikely to draw the Incel vote. So by default Trump harvested their votes. This is peculiar when you think about. For the first time in modern history, a political statement was made and turned an election on the basis of men not getting laid. I don't think there has ever been an American election like this where a sizeable part of demographic consisted of men who made it a political cause that they were un-fuckable - and somehow this wasn't their fault. It was society's fault. In future, democratic strategists in America are going to have to reckon with this demographic and ask themselves how they make inroads into these men. 

The natural instinct is to say, no, we will not pander to such lowly sentiment and aspirations. Yet they have to go to the drawing board with something for this constituency. The Democrats can't just leave the un-fuckable Incel men to be automatically set to vote for the Trumpists. 

Arguably the big jump to the right in all constituencies was fuelled by new Gen Z male voters coming of age, and whaddaya know? They're bigger assholes than we thought - they voted overwhelmingly for Trump. I'm sure they have their reasons... They're not commendable reasons if they lead you to abandon principles and vote for Trump. Pardon the pun, this is going to be a hard nut to crack. 

Plight of Masculinity

Still, one of the themes coming out of the Trumpets victory is that somehow this outcome is the upshot of the crisis of masculinity that has been bulling for, say 20-odd years. In reality American masculinity probably has benign some kind of crisis for at least 50 years if Susan Faludi's book 'Stiffed' is any indication. The stories she managed to collect for that tome were on the whole soul-destroying and devastating. Her conclusion  at the end of the book made the pithy self-serving point that men might find a way through all this mess if the embraced feminism and emancipated themselves from traditional gender roles set out for men. Of course a feminist would say that. 

Except in the years since that book came out, the route back to traditional masculinity was also blown up, and nobody actually addressed how men should be. That space, unattended to by the Left got taken up by the Right in figures like Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan and Jordan Petersen. Their comic book level, asinine depiction of masculinity was all Gen Z had to go on, and now that they've come of age they've become assholes. And we're surprised this happened at all? 

Nobody on the Left likes the outcome of the US Elections. But Trump beating a woman candidate has happened twice now and this time with younger voter participation, the result was even more pronounced. There's a clear problem with what the Left is perceived to be saying and how the Left judges those who disagree with them. The conversation has gone just so far to the point these Gen Z men will lie to pollsters they would vote for Kamala because that plays better for them individually, but they know full well it hurts the Left to vote for Trump, and that's why they do. It's no longer about discourse, it's about existential action. 

Susan Faludi would tell you this is Backlash on a huge, generational scale. I love her book 'Stiffed' but I have to say this is the election Feminism worked on 50 years to lose. I know the Leftist women are hurting the world all over. But they must reckon with the fact they've lost support of the next generation of men.   

The Gaze of the Left-ist Parties

All of that led me to wonder how any party views anybody. Trump and his campaign looked at Incels and thought "now that's a demographic we need to go after." That made me wonder how say, the Australian Labour Party views my vote. What would people like Albo and Richard Marles and Penny Wong think of me and my vote? If we're being honest, they don't know I exist, and to the extent that I'm generally centre-left in my views, my vote would be something they take for granted. Equally, the Liberal Party would look at my vote as something they could not turn, so they would not necessarily work the policies to bid for my vote. 

Look, this is just a thought experiment. If we're always going to charge people with their gaze being filtered through identity, it's fair to ask just how one is being decoded by my own side of politics. That is to say, you can take overt discrimination from the Right because you just know that's how they roll. How do you know that your own side isn't discriminating against you but hiding it really well? It's not paranoid to ask this for the simple reason that I'm not convinced my stance to various issues are necessarily being reflected in the discourse. Worse still, I feel like I'm being ignored by the people on my own side of politics. If I'm asking this about the ALP in Australia, how can we be surprised if old grassroots Democrat voters of past elections revised their views on the Democratic Party? 

Is the left actually representing what it purports to represent? There are signs we're being played everywhere. 

I'll be honest. I think Albo's going to lose to Peter Dutton at the next Federal election. The signs are there. the combination of the rapid inflation unleashed by Putin's war and the cost of living crisis brought about by the Property Bubble and rapid rise in interest rates has pretty much taken away the argument that Albo and the ALP have managed the economy well. The ship has sailed (and hit an iceberg). If the US elections are anything to go by, the Leftist incumbent government won't be able to marshal the crucial, swinging votes. If their election gets turned into a circus about abortion and transgender people going into women's toilets, and about woke-ism, they're going to be skewered at the ballot box. 

Trump's Triumphant Return

The Dust Settles, The Poo Still Stinks

Where do we start with all this? I think first of all, we have yet another election where the polls told a completely different story to how people actually voted. I'm sure the pollsters were working very hard to be as precise as possible but polls are vulnerable to people lying. And when you think about people voting for Donald Trump, there is something shameful about it in exactly the same way that voting for Kamala Harris would be virtuous. This is exactly the bias that Trumpets object to, as they denounce the Left. They lie to pollsters and cast their votes to a convicted felon. 

I imagine the Democrats are in intellectual disarray. Let's face it, they have been found out to be phonies by their own side. The working class voting block they used to count on decamped from the Dems and voted Trump. If Democrats and disaffected Republicans chased out from their own party by the Trumpists, together cannot beat the Trumpets in number, we've turned a corner in history. Things are desperate in middle America, and they really wanted to poke the 'woke' people in the eye with a sharp pencil. And I have to say as somebody somewhere sitting on the Centre Left, I do appreciate that sentiment. If Kamala Harris candidacy can be reduced to 'woke', it means she's the candidate for transgender women who are born men, turning up in women's toilets. Compared to that, maybe leaning into fascism is penny ante stuff?

DEI - Disenfranchisement, Exclusion, and Inequality

The working class stiffs in the Rust Belt did not stick with the Democrats. They went back to Trump. That is to say, in 2020 they voted out Trump because of his incompetence and generally ramshackle style of government which created chaos everywhere. They came back for the Dems to vote in Biden-Harris. If this vote is any kind verdict, it's a resounding denunciation of the Democratic Party.  

One way to look at it is that even though the US Democrats are ostensibly a Centre-Left party, they clearly are not one. Their economic policies are not really as left-leaning as you would think by the way the Republicans demonise them. You would think they were communist-adjacent but in reality they are more Republican-adjacent, and they only look left to Trumpist Republicans because Trumpists are fascists. The democrats by their very nature can only make gestures towards the working class vote. It can't deliver a whole bunch for them; things like socialised medicine and universal healthcare as Bernie Sanders bangs on, are actually not really on offer. 

If you thought their health policy was unambitious, their position on taxation in general is decidedly capitalist if we're being polite. They don't dislike capitalist exploitation any less than the Republicans - they like it quite a lot.  

Because the Dems are not properly of the Left, their claim on being the part of the worker has to go back 100 years to Franklin Delano Roosevelt to find any proof. The Dems have had long ties to unions, and the illusion that they are a kind of Labor/Labour Party equivalent in the American context, but the reality of their policy making and governance has shown time and time again this is a delusion. The working class in America have taken note, and they have become massive swing voters in the Rust Belt exactly because the Democrats have very little credibility left as the working man's party. The working class in the Rust Belt have been alienated and disenfranchised. They have been excluded from the prosperity enjoyed by coastal elites, and the inequality is flat-out killing them. 

It's understandable they vote Trump.

Baby Boomers Continue Their Reign

It's getting weird how American politics is stuck in this gear. We go all the way back to 1992 with Bill Clinton, and all of the Presidents have been Boomers since. Even if Kamala Harris had won, she too was a young Boomer. If Trump dies in office, they jump straight to Millennials with JD Vance. That would even be okay if Vance himself weren't such a crypto-fascist, liar, and all-round-hatable schmuck. Maybe Trump will be the last Boomer President. It's hard to see how the Democrats are going to jump with their next candidate in 2028. I'm betting they will choose yet another Boomer. 

There were attempts to cast Kamala Harris as a Gen-X type. She was born in late 1964, so she's close enough! Maybe that's so for some people. Did anybody believe for a moment that Harris spent the 1990s listening to Nirvana and Red Hot Chilli Peppers? Yeah me neither.   

What Kind of White Woman Votes Trump?

This was the same question back in 2016. The hard to thing to fathom back then was the white woman demographic. This time around, 90% of black women voted Harris; 60% of hispanic women voted Harris, but only 45% of white women voted Harris. This echos the same voting pattern as the women who voted for Trump and Clinton back in 2016. Black women overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton back then too, which contrasted greatly with the underwhelming support Clinton got from white women. 

Back then, the question was "how can these women be (stupidly) voting against their own interests?" 

Turns out, they were voting for their disenfranchised sons - and they turned out much stronger in that vector this time around. So much for all the talk about this election being about women's bodies and choices. These women looked at all these university-educated women going on about women's rights and thought about the zero-sum game of the gender war. To open space for women, men have to lose space. For women to climb, a man has to lose a spot to her and step down. So not-for-first-time, they decided to vote against a woman who would take the top job from a man. 

I don't know what the Democrats can do about this gender war schema. When it gets boiled down, their agenda is such that they have to rob from Peter and Paul to pay Mary. If Peter and Paul don't want to vote for that arrangement, they've got a tough sell. I personally don't think having a female POTUS is any kind of issue, but twice now, the US electorate has given that notion a big thumbs down. It begs the question, what the hell will the Dems do about that electoral reality? 

 

  

View From The Couch 19/Aug/2024

Labor Ratatouille

The premise of 'Ratatouille' is that it's about a rat in a hat who is actually a talented chef. It's a fun, family picture, and very charming if you could just overcome the abjection of a rat in a kitchen. 

And this is kind of how I feel about the story being put out by the Fatima Payman camp. It's all very charming but at the end of the day she's still just a rat in the ranks who bolted to the cross bench over a single issue. She's still Mal Colston with a Hijab and a colourful backstory. 

Payman's brief association with the ALP has ended and she will forever be known as a "Labor rat" but her experience has convinced her that change needs to occur.  

"I feel like the Labor Party really needs to review their rules because I don't think they're ready to have diversity with a voice," she says. 

"They want diversity but voiceless." 

Aly rejects this assessment. "It has been my experience that not only am I given a seat at the table, I am also given a voice," Aly says.

She just doesn't get it. The person who needs to "review" is Fatima Payman herself. 

Where is my spew emoji? Oh, here it is. 

🤮

No Ceasefire

To nobody's surprise, Hamas rejected the ceasefire proposal. This is not surprising because if there ever was a peace, Hamas would lose its raison d'être. You can't ask people to have cease-fire when the whole point of their existence is to continue a forever war until all demands are met and the Jews are eradicated "from the River to the Sea". They complained about Netanyahu "putting obstacles in the way of peace":

"He (Netanyahu) also set new conditions in the prisoner exchange file, and backed down from others, which all prevent the completion of the exchange deal," it said. 

"We hold Netanyahu fully responsible for the failure of the mediators' efforts, the obstruction of reaching an agreement, and full responsible for the lives of his prisoners, who are exposed to the same danger that our people are exposed to due to his continued aggression and systematic targeting of all aspects of life in the Gaza Strip." 

Mr Netanyahu had earlier told an Israeli cabinet meeting Hamas was blocking a deal.
"We are holding very complex negotiations in which the other side is a murderous terrorist organisation that is unbridled and obstinate," he said. 

"There are things we can be flexible on and there are things that we cannot be flexible on, which we will insist on. We know how to distinguish between the two very well."

Well of course they would say that - and of course  Netanyahu would say that. The whole laughable thing is that the people who want the ceasefire the most are not the combatants but the Mediators. Just picture that - all the mediator countries trying to bring both of these parties kicking and screaming to the negotiating table when both sides know there is no hankering for any kind of enduring peace. All that good faith being wasted on people acting in the worst faith. If that's not enough to make you spit out your coffee through your nostrils, I don't know what is. 

Okay, maybe not so laughable for everybody, but it's pretty hilarious if your sense of humour is black enough. 

Sarcasm In Politics

This one had me chuckling. Ukraine has been making headway in Kursk. After that summer offensive of 2022 failed to achieve much, the Ukrainians are finally back to sticking it to the man by going into Russian territory. They've made great progress, and the world has been asking what exactly the Ukrainians might be up to. 

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Ukraine’s military incursion into Russia’s Kursk region aims to create a buffer zone to prevent further attacks by Moscow across the border.

Isn't that sort of using Putin's logic against him? Talk about sticking it to the man. 

Ukraine’s commander in chief, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, claimed last week that his forces had advanced across 1,000 sq km (386 sq miles) of the region, although it was not possible to independently verify how much territory Ukrainian forces effectively control. 

In his remarks on creating a buffer zone, Zelenskiy said Ukrainian forces “achieved good and much-needed results”. 

The Institute for the Study of War has “observed claims” that Ukraine’s operation in Kursk advanced through 800 sq km over its initial six days. The incursion “attacked largely unprepared, unequipped and unmanned Russian defensive positions along the border”, the US thinktank said in its daily report on the conflict. Ukraine had continued to make rapid advances in Kursk “following the deployment of Russian reinforcements to the area”, it added.

Nice. It's about time some real pressure was put on Putin (no pun intended). 30 months in, I'm even more sick of this war than the one in Gaza, and I have to say wee can all lay the blame at Putin's feet. It will be a good day when this ends and Putin loses power - and it may even happen the other way around where Putin goes first. 

View From The Couch 12/Aug/2024

 One For Wittgenstein, None For Raygun

Where does one start? Let's start with this: I pretty much avoided the Olympics again. I was low-key disinterested last time in Tokyo, but this time I was high-key disinterested with a double dose of I-don't-wanna-know. The medal tally, the breathless celebration of our representatives, and the overall cheese of the Olympic competition largely fell on actively-backed ears. 

So it is a surprise that there was one performance that cut through everything else that happened and it is Rachel Gunn and her three losses. For precision, we must point out the cumulative score against her was 54-0. She was completely blown out by the competition. She is in most part, notable for having been so off the pace to have been delusional. 

Gunn lost all three of her round-robin battles by a combined score of 54-0 and admitted post-event that she couldn't compete athletically with the tricks and spins of her younger opponents. 

'What I wanted to do was come out here and do something new and different and creative - that's my strength, my creativity,' she said. 

Gunn has published a doctoral thesis entitled 'Deterritorializing Gender in Sydney's Breakdancing Scene: A B-girl's Experience of B-boying'. 

The thesis questioned why so few female participants were part of the male-dominated scene but spoke of the sport as a 'space that embraces difference'.

Yeah right. Tell me that doesn't sound like she's full of shit.

I've had a difficult time unpacking this 'performance'. What the hell does this mean? How the hell does Deterritorialising Gender work in the context of being in the Olympics doing women's sport where gender is pretty much a matter of binary determinism, and putting in a lame-ass effort? How can anybody determine the social meaning to this? It's like a radical, context-free, artistic gesture to an unseen art audience more than a proper sporting effort. 

Clearly it isn't a first order serious attempt at trying to win a medal for Australia, or is it? It must be some kind of secondary order performative gesture about maybe how the Olympics are about participation, and not about the medal haul - although if you were to judge it from the media coverage, you'd be hard-pressed to think it was indeed about participation. The Prime Minister Anthony Albanese seems to subscribe to the participation-trophy school of thought where trying is the important bit. Which is emblematic because he's a fricken' Boomer and she's a fricken Millennial. 

Maybe Albo is right, and this should indeed be understood more as an Eddie The Eagle moment. If so, it has served its purpose. It has out done all the other medal-winning efforts as the singular Australian sports moment from 2024 Paris Olympics.  

But I tell you what, she looked awful doing it. 

The Man History Left Behind

Please STFU, Paul Keating

It saddens me greatly that Paul Keating comes out of his hide-hole to go on the ABC to blast Australia's defence policy. He's reduced himself to being a China Shill. 

Paul Keating would have it that Australia would be better off if it didn't join AUKUS and had its own independent defence stance in the South Pacific. When the matter of Taiwan is brought up, He's happy to sell the Taiwanese down the river and claims that Taiwan belongs to China and whatever difference they have about politics, it would get resolved by itself. He then brings up the spectre of "Australian kids shot to death on the beach in Taiwan" as a reason not to be part of AUKUS. It's really quite selfish and myopic. I'm amazed he wants to take this position. 

Australia's independence is no small stakes, and while it's true Australia would not like to be dragged into a war in Asia fighting China, China is clearly the aggressor wanting to take Taiwan by force. Their ambassador even told us that we should just accept they would use force to take Taiwan if it came to push or shove. Australia didn't join AUKUS because it wants to bully China. It joined AUKUS to present a deterrence. It's very disheartening to see Paul Keating of all people not stand by democracy on principle. Instead he's fear-mongering that our soldiers would die on the beaches of Taiwan and that is why Australia should not join alliances. I mean, really.    

As part of a highly globalised world economy, Australia does not have an isolationist advantage any more.  It also has a responsibility to be part of a global network to preserve the peace and protect the interest of as many people as possible. By dint of being a democracy, Taiwan is on this side, and Mainland China is not. 

Paul Keating's lamentable argument is that Australia can afford to be isolationist and should be isolationist, and make no sacrifices towards the global order. I guess if you don't want any friends, you would be willing to sell your neighbours down the river. I never thought I'd say this but his sense of Australia sovereignty is actually deeply selfish and ugly. We're better than that, we believe the democracies of our allies are worth fighting for and protecting, and that's why we're in AUKUS and the Quad. 

Paul Keating needs to read his briefings properly. 

Quick Shots 29/Jul/2024

House of The Dragon Season 2 

There's that Marcellus Wallace line about "getting medieval" on the sorry ass of Zed in Pulp Fiction, which eternally echoes through all proceedings in the GRR-Martin-verse of Game of Thrones and House of The Dragon. The medieval-looking-but-grimmer lives of these characters are Hobbsian. Everything is rather nasty, brutish, and short. It's sort of appropriate that Hobbes' book was 'Leviathan' and these shows deal with the difficult house-training of fire-breathing dragons. 

Emma D'Arcy is a revelation. She's singularly the best thing in this show. I'm not sure I like the lesbian scene that developed between Rhaenyra and Mysaria to be honest, but it's an HBO show. They can't resist a prurient turn of plot somewhere along the way.  

Still only 2 seasons in, there are plenty of ways this show can go bad still, but for now it is holding its keep. I'm still a bit lukewarm about the whole show, but in most part I want to know what happens next. It's utterly unlike the Disney+ shows where I just don't want to know what happens next.  

Beverly Hills Cop - Axel F

Good God was this necessary? It's hard to say. As of this writing, it's holding up credibly over on Rotten Tomatoes so we should not be too mean to it. They brought back the gang, nobody got missed, but the laughs weren't as uproarious. It was more of a chuckle-fest with call backs to the old films. 

It's a bit Nietzschean in that the whole enterprise is beyond good or evil. Netflix is doing it because it knows from data that people will click on it out of curiosity. It is emblematic of how people who used to support action comedy releases at the cinemas are now sitting at home watching Netflix instead. It's a lot tougher to get them out of their daily routines to get back to the cinemas. I imagine Deadpool & Wolverine will do okay at the box offices because it is full of nostalgia for when the same demographic used to go see these movies in the cinemas 15-25 years ago. 

It kind of provides the proof that the demographic that used to support this kind of content at the box office are now staying at home watching Netflix. I really can't imagine anybody younger than 44 would like or enjoy this film. 

2024 Paris Summer Olympics

Thanks to the pandemic moving the Tokyo Olympics 2021, with Beijing winter Games in 2022, it's beginning to feel like there's too much Olympic Games going on. I'm not watching any of it. I'm not saying out of a sense of hostility, but more out of a sense of exhaustion. I understand Paris chose to do it differently this year, showcasing the culture in the city. They urged Brisbane to do the same, and not build dumb stadia that fall into disuse after the Olympic Games move on. First of all, there is no culture to showcase in Brisbane. Secondly, the only thing you can showcase is the 'Gabba - a veritable cultural landmark of a stadium. I get the feeling that the city of Paris, having won the right to host the games realised in the 7years since that maybe it wasn't that much into the idea of a global sporting event to shut down the country's main city for 2 weeks, just for sport.

They're not crazy for thinking that. Of course, it would not be how Australians think about the subject. 

Let's All Grow UP A Bit, Please

What's Wrong With Being A Consumerist?

Nothing.... mostly. 

In a late capitalist world, we are all consumers. We live in a sea of branding and advertising and selling points and marketing hype. We are presented with the inevitability of making transactions to obtain things, and about the only control we have, is over which thing do we choose to buy. Tragically, if you can't afford what you want to buy, you are bored to either buy the cheaper thing and find satisfaction somehow, or save up for the real deal. 

If these decisions dominate your grocery shopping, then that's part of the ordinary existence in late capitalism. Do you want Coke or Pepsi? Do you want Arafour mandarins or Imperial mandarins? These are the kinds of questions that the shopping experience pushes towards you. They go through the gamut of products put to you through capitalism, right up to the house you may choose to inhabit and the suburb in which it sits. We all make choices based on what we can afford against what we want to have. 

What then is the problem with treating political parties like consumer products? It's because you're supposed to exercise a lot more control - and therefore thought, - as you participate in democracy. That is to say, the seeming market like atmosphere of election campaigns is actually misleading bullshit. You are supposed to think about a brand spectrum of ideas and apply some critical thinking in trying to see what is worth your single vote - because believe you me, you get to vote far fewer times in your life than you imagine when you turn 18. 

Electioneers will come at you like a marketing campaign to feed you notions about what their candidate is going to do for you and society. They will play up to your prejudices and unconscious desire to punish 'the other'. They will flatter your vanity and appeal to your sense of justice; and this is all well and good, but your vote should not be cast because of branding or single issue hype. There's a lot more to the transaction than the leaflet they give you as you walk towards the booth. 

I don't mind if somebody is all out for Gucci or Chanel or whatever brand. It doesn't matter how one defines one's identity for that matter. Truth be told, nobody cares. However in politics, your vote matters and it amounts to something. What you're transacting isn't just money. That's why I think voters should at least think about where exactly they stand in late capitalism, and that that means, and how that is working out for you and your loved ones. 

Grubbiness of Democracy Is A Feature, Not A Bug

I can't believe I have to spell this out in this time of history. It's like people have forgotten whole chunks of history. All the big issues take a long time to resolve. That's the nature of things. 

From time to time we find the party we voted for, does not do the obvious thing and support our favourite cause. God only knows it only took all of the 1980s and part of the 1990s before the ALP to admit that Global Warming was a problems and needed to be tackled. Then the Coalition won government and it wasn't until 2006 or so that the Liberal Party led by John Howard grudgingly admitted that Climate Change was real. To get there, they had to change Global Warming to Climate Change because Global Warming would scare too many people. (Arguably, people needed to be scared a fuckload more but that's another story). And even then there were electoral gyrations that let Tony Abbott win office for the Coalition and he went on to carry on like there was no such thing by dismantling policies to do with Global Warming. 

The list of Australian Prime Ministers who lost their jobs in the turmoil surrounding the 'culture wars' around climate policy then are John Howard, Kevin Rudd (twice) Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and finally Scott Morrison. Peter Dutton is doing his best to bring back the culture wars in a bid to win the next election but he forgets, that is exactly how his party lost the last election. The simple point is not over by the looks of things. The fossil fuel industry will keep donating big bucks to the Coalition in a bid to stave off the X-day when fossil fuels will cease to be the main source of our energy. It's difficult and complex and awful and generally grubby exactly because so many interests intersect on the fossil fuels alone. 

It's not even clear we are able to curb our emissions enough according to the stipulations of the international agreements. And this after a lifetime of following this subject has made me despair for humanity - but it has not made me despair about democracy. 

And that's just Global Warming. 

Same Sex Marriage in Australia had its own Odyssey. From the first Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras march of 1978 to  when it was finally legislated in 2017. It didn't take 10 years - it took close to 40 years. It took a lot longer than the participants in that struggle would have wanted to but it got done and in a way that the majority of Australians could accept. 

All this is to say if anybody thinks the ALP should suddenly adopt a hyper-partisan pro-Palestinian view, they don't understand our democracy very well. You're going to have to negotiate a lot harder and longer than simply threatening to vote for an independent. If it were as easy as that, our country would be a very different by place by now. The first step of politics is to accept the reality you have as it comes to you. And it's not a bad place to start at all. 

We Just Want Peace, Part 1001

Going back to 1975 when the Vietnam War ended, we've had a lot of war since. I won't go into the list. I started but then got sick of it. I'm just sick of war, so making a list of all the ones I've seen on the news seemed like a perverse act of masochism. 

And I have been lucky. With all this fighting going around the globe, I have not lost family to war since 1945. I certainly have not lost any friends to war. I have not had to learn how to use weapons, or had to undergo basic training. The day the Chinese invade Australia, I'd probably be useless in defending the place. In all honesty, I do not want to participate in any war, I do not want to experience killing anybody and sure as hell don't want to get hit in battle. 

Part of it is that as the years wear on, one is left with overwhelming sense of fruitlessness of all these conflicts. What was the point of occupying Afghanistan for so long? Or Iraq? What good did it do to anybody? What good is it for Serbia to want to maintain control over lands with people that don't want to have anything to do with them? What good is it for Russia to be sending troops into Crimea for some imagined historical grievance or reckoning or whatever the hell Vladimir Putin is imagining? And what is the point of surging out to kill 1020 people and taking hostages if it means you have to wear the full weight of a modern, well-equipped military? 

Part of it is the bleak feeling that Global Warming is going to wipe out whole swathes of habitable zones for humanity. Is killing one another the best way to deal with this ever-enlarging, ever-present looming problem? In the late 20th Century in the early 21st Century, it has become increasingly clear that the party that wants to engage in warfare will pay a steep cost. Thus, one wonders can we at least learn some less ons for all this and not push for territorial claims or mineral mining rights or fishing rights? Can't we just trade for things we don't have? 

Anyway, for a blog that spend s a lot of time talking about wars in distant lands, I just want to say it would be much better if there were no wars anywhere, near or far. 

View From The Couch - 21/Jul/2024

Biden Quits Race

In the least surprising historic event ever, Joe Biden pulled out of the 2024 presidential race. The commentary that's flooded the internet is mostly one of relief. The most obvious problem for the Democrats has been addressed and to that extent we can all feel some comfort. Joe Biden has endorsed Kamala Harris to run in his place and it seems to be the obvious choice to start unifying the fraying factions of the Democratic Party. Not only has Biden endorsed her, the Clintons (remember them?) have also come out in support of Kamala Harris. Barack Obama has not, but then one would imagine something will get stage managed and he too will fall in line. After all it's the first of many elections to come where America will have to stave off the neo-fascist loony insurgency begin by Trump.

The scuttlebutt seeping out is that Biden was shown polling figures that strongly indicated he had no way to win. And so he did the obvious thing and pulled out. It's a shame that actual policy accomplishments and administrative achievements don't figure into any of these discussions. Only two days ago, Bernie Sanders was thundering saying the Biden is the most progressive POTUS of his lifetime. Seeing that Jimmy Carter was once POTUS in Bernie's time, I wonder how that squares. 

Because his demeanour so obviously betrayed his decaying mental capacity in the last debate, Joe Biden was chased into quitting this race but really, he's been a fine president in the last 4 years. We owe him a debt of gratitude for keeping it together, and keeping the West together in the face of the Covid pandemic, Trumpism, and Putin's war.

I saw Owen Jones saying good riddance because Biden's presidency was still pro-Israel (as all other US Administrations have been) and the death count in Palestine has been too much, thanks to his support of Israel. That's a pretty long bow to draw. I tend to think the people on the ground on both sides of that war bear much more responsibility than Joe Biden or for that matter an Anthony Albanese or Rishi Sunak. I guess if we want to look at it through a very skewed prism, I can see why Joe Biden might appear to be a horrible President to you, but I tend to stand by Bernie Sanders on this. President Joe Biden's been pretty good. The real shame is indeed that he grew old. And everybody else knows it, Owen. Shame on you. 

Gen-X? No Way

While we're on the topic of age, clearly the discussion can turn from Biden's age and frailty to Trump's age and his possible dementia. Kamal Harris is going to turn 60 in October, so contrary to the narrative, it's not exactly a generation change to go to Kamala Harris. 

That's right. Born in late 1964, Kamala Harris is a tail-end Boomer, much like Anthony Albanese. So it's actually not a generational change to go to Harris at all, it's just that they could indeed find a Boomer who was born at the end of the Boomer era. While the Boomer constituency is steadily dying, those that are still alive and operating in political circles are still powerful, so once again, America doesn't quite change generations - but we'll take it. As the old joke about Alan Jones and the parrot and emu goes, "close enough!" 

It's in stark contract to the republicans who did decide to go with a Millennial as their Vice President candidate in JD Vance, born 1984. If Trump beats Harris and then has a heart attack, we skip right to a Millennial. To be honest, I'm not that worried about him being a Millennial - I'm more concerned that he has firmly nut-job ideas, and that he's been let into the inner circle of US Politics. But then again, there's already Donald J Trump. I think the best I can say about Vance is that I've seen Dan Quayle and JD Vance is no Dan Quayle. 

The Early Optimistic View

The early narrative is that Harris will use her skills honed as a prosecutor to cross examine Trump's dodgy clams and promises as well as put to him that he's nothing but a common felon. This strikes me as Hollywood fantasy. I've watched a few interviews of Harris to gt a better feel for her and the one thing that poked out from it all was that she's actually not a great interviewee and that she doesn't really cut to the quick. She certainly doesn't strike mw as the sharp District Attorney in TV shows who go after the big bad. Maybe I've watched too many legal shows over the years but she sure doesn't strike me like an incisive prosecutor who would pull apart a bad alibi.

That said, the democratic base seems to have been awoken by this change and there are reports of campaign funds flooding in. I guess there have been a heck of a lot of fence-sitters waiting for something to happen. It's amazing how these events have made the assassination attempt on Donald Trump yesterday's news in a hurry. I think I pointed out some weeks ago that a week can be a long time in politics. Biden's withdrawal has demonstrated this to be true. 

So maybe the Democrats will efficiently coalesce behind Kamala Harris, find a good running partner who can tide over the swing states, and go on to beat the Trump-Vance ticket.  

 

The DEI Complaints Fest

They'e Not Idealists, They're Consumers

Apparently younger 'diverse' voters are split over the ALP. It paints a picture of young voters with muslim voters getting hot under the collar about how the ALP isn't doing enough about Palestine, with added disgruntlement about how the Fatima Payman business played out. 

Asking young voters in Western Sydney about the Labor Party's treatment of now-independent senator Fatima Payman elicits responses ranging from anger to despair.
"I was devastated by what happened," 22-year-old Sophia Sarwary from Wentworthville told triple j Hack. 

"When I saw her suspended, it made me super angry. It didn't make sense to me." 

"She was just talking about Palestine, and nobody else [in Parliament] does," Sophia said.
"I think what this has symbolised for a lot of us that if someone chooses to say something different [from the Labor Party] then they will be punished," 22-year-old Rida Khan from Mt Druitt told Hack.

Mount Druitt - now there's a name. It's always been the place with the public school with the worst performing scores in the HSC, year after year, isn't it? Snark aside, these are pretty unintelligent comments. You get the feeling they don't really understand things like, rules and conventions. It's always about what they want first, with no circumspection about who else might have a stake in the same institution. I've already covered the abject stupidity of the Payman thing so I won't go into it, except to say it's striking how these young people are choosing to ignore that the Labor Party they disparage so much is the Australian Labor Party, and so will intend to rule for all Australians. It is not the Palestinian Labor Party, it is not the Diversity Party, It is not the Progressive Bleeding Hearts Party. 

In a lifetime of living with progressive politics in this country, one is torn between the ethical idealism of the Greens and the realpolitik capacity of the ALP. Politics is famously the art of the possible. It's not going to go 100% your way al the time. So it is disturbing to see that these voters are insisting on putting Palestine and its fate front and centre in Australian politics, and get upset when somebody breaks the party rules and is suspended. 

They don't seem to get that while Palestine might be the hot topic for them. Yet if you are from elsewhere in Australia yet still part of the broader left, it might not even register as a top 5 issue. Just off the top of my head I think there would Housing Crisis, Cost of Living, High Interest Rates, Student Debt, Global Warming, all sitting ahead of Palestine. I dare say even the war in Ukraine would sit ahead of what is going on in Gaza. If they expect Palestine to be front and centre, it's they who are not paying attention to the rest of the country. 

The war has been a mobilising force for many younger voters — and not just those from diverse backgrounds.

"We've seen the true colours of what Labor is," Sophia said. "I do think that people who originally voted for Labor will change their mind."

"Historically my family and extended family always voted Labor, and so have my friends and their families, especially in Mt Druitt," Rida said.

"I know my parents are no longer going to be voting Labor due to their stance on Palestine. What we feel is that they haven't taken enough action."

What exactly are they expecting? The way democracy works is that they have to convince their fellow Labor Party members that this is indeed important. It's going to be frustrating and tiresome, but that's what it takes. 

But pushing for change comes at a huge personal cost, and frustration at what she perceives as a lack of movement on Palestinian rights and recognition of Palestinian statehood by the parliamentary wing of the Labor Party has made Yusra reassess.

"Personally, I have been asking myself a lot of questions about whether I will continue to be a member."

It hurts that these idiots are part of this democracy and their votes count - but that is the deal. One person, one vote. The problem with these people is that they want the ALP to suddenly turn into a single issue party galvanised around Palestine, and when it doesn't they get all huffy and say the ALP is wrong for not doing so. I don't hear these same people campaigning for the people of Ukraine. Why is it that the crisis is in Gaza gets a higher slot in the priority stakes over Ukraine with these people? Isn't it because they feel like some sort of kinship with the fellow Muslims and not at all for the East Europeans? Isn't it equally arguable that the ALP should be doing more about Ukraine? After all the Russians are bombing children's hospitals just like the Israelis are doing in Gaza - and possibly without any justification at all whereas at least the Israelis have the fig leaf of saying Hamas is hiding in children's hospitals.  

That is all just distraction in the scheme of things. This diverse young demographic doesn't care for Ukraine because it's not about them enough. The truth is, these people are treating politics like they're consumers. They want to pick a party based on the ingredients on the wrapping, when in reality it is a lot more subtle and difficult. But it is a special kind of stupid that wants to reduce things to simple slogans and single issue politics. If this is the way the diverse young are thinking, I hate to say it but the future of this country is bleak.  

Blaxland Voters' Blues

The ALP's primary vote is static and declining. The Greens are growing on the back of collecting the young progressive vote. Apparently, Blaxland is the case in point where the ALP really needs to reach out to the diverse, young women who are not all alike but mysteriously in favour of Fatima Payman crossing the floor. 

The suspension of Fatima Payman from the federal Labor Caucus. Over the past few months, we interviewed dozens of young Australian Muslim women, all born in Australia. Their main points were striking: 

- They have faced social abuse throughout their lives. 

- They are regularly reminded of their perceived inferiority. 

- They lack a political voice. When they attempt to speak up, alert, or draw attention to their disadvantages, the society they were born into, grew up in, and now raise their own children in demands their silence. 

My message to Federal Labor - bring your A game to the next election in your diverse electorates because they may indeed be on fire. Crazy brave stuff here.

This made me ask if I would want these votes if they're already so hostile. I kind of feel like if the ALP is not their cup of tea, that's fine. They can go vote for the Libs and find out how that goes - because voting for the Greens will only mean their votes will preference to the ALP in Blaxland. Maybe these young diverse women who like Fatima Payman so much will find it better on the conservative side of politics? After all if it wasn't for the blatant self-interest involved in pushing the progressive wheelbarrow, the other aspects of their lives are pretty socially conservative. The only reason they vote progressive is because they know the Liberal Party is white, blond, and contemptuous of Muslims. But otherwise, they actually share more values in common with the conservative voters of this country than the progressives. 

I hate to break it to the ALP but maybe they just need to let these diverse young voters decide for themselves what exactly is their political priority. If it is to punish the ALP for not being Pro-Palestinian enough, then so be it - let them vote Greens or for their own local single-issue candidate. It would suck for Jason Clare, but really, this is the only way it can go. The ALP can't afford to be held hostage by a token diverse young senator who turned out to be a single issue candidate, if the ALP is going to govern for all.

Sometimes principles mean something. They've got theirs, you've got yours. Let these voters walk. This is why I don't believe Fatima Payman at all when she goes on a bout ALP values and how she supports them. Her actions patently demonstrate that's all utter horseshit. Her values, whatever they are, lie elsewhere. 

Where The White People Live

I was on the train one morning as it pulled out of Bankstown. A group of Year 12 girls were seated next to me talking about what they wanted to do after they finished the HSC. They had their hijabs on and had matching school bags and matching iPhone cases.  One of them said they wanted to take a gap year; another pointed out that more than half the girls who take a gap year get married during that year. One of the girls said she wanted to move to a beachside suburb. The other girls agreed. The last one to open their mouth said she wanted to move to Manly where there are cafes, and "where the white people live".

I'm not making this up. 

The Wowsers' Parade

Precious D

Thanks to my dear sister, I was at the Tenacious D show on Sunday night where they celebrated Kyle Gass' birthday. When presented with a cake and asked to make a wish, Kyle Gass quipped "Don't miss Trump next time". 

And now it's a furore as Jack Black threw Kyle under the bus and cancelled the tour.  

In a new development, Gass has also been dropped by his talent agency, Greene Talent, with rep Michael Greene telling TMZ they have parted ways due to the incident. 

In an Instagram post on Tuesday night, Black said the tour had been called off and suggested the incident had caused a major falling out with Gass. 

“I was blindsided by what was said at the show on Sunday. I would never condone hate speech or encourage political violence in any form,” Black stated. 

“After much reflection, I no longer feel it is appropriate to continue the Tenacious D tour, and all future creative plans are on hold. I am grateful to the fans for their support and understanding.”

Yikes. While I was there, I did not see that development coming. At the show, the moment came and went and some people guffawed and they just moved on to the next song. 

By the way, it was a really cool show, so I do feel for the good people of Newcastle who won't get to see it. 

Tendentious K

In all the fucked up commentary, the weirdest might be Kevin Rudd weighing in.

“It makes me feel sick someone would joke about violence. Physically ill,” he told news.com.au. 

“People might think it’s a bit of ‘funny haha’ at a concert to run off at the mouth off about this stuff.  

“It’s not,” he said.

That's really insane. Did we ask for his input? I guess that's what you get from news.com.au. He's in Minnesota, as Australia's ambassador to the USA. The gig was a bunch of Americans playing a show in Sydney. One of them makes a bad joke and it turns into this kind of commentary?:

“It’s about threats to physical life; it’s about the near assassination of a former and prospective President of the United States, depending on the votes of the American people.  

“It’s about the murder of innocent civilians and two people being seriously wounded. 

“These people need to grow up and find a decent job”.

Good heavens, right back at you Kev. Please - you go find a decent job, Kevin - for fuck's sake. 

God only knows why he was asked to comment. It seems to lack programmatic specificity if you ask me. If we all felt sick to the pits of our stomach every time somebody told a black-humoured joke, Gastroenterologists the world over would be rich as Steve Ballmer.

Then There Are Idiots Like These

   

Who the hell is Ralph Babet?  Turns out he's from the United Australia Party. God our democracy sucks sometimes. 

Senator Ralph Babet has demanded the federal government deport American rock band Tenacious D, after one of its members appeared to joke at a Sydney concert about Donald Trump’s attempted assassination.

"I call on the prime minister Anthony Albanese to join me in denouncing Tenacious D, Jack Black and band member Kyle Gass, and I call on the immigration minister Andrew Giles to revoke their visas and deport them immediately."

Stupid as 6 squirrels in a condom. Imagine going to the High Court arguing in front of the justices that somebody should get deported for telling an off-colour joke. 

I guess all the nut job rightists are currying favour with the incoming Donald Trump Administration they're imagining. 

Quick Shots 15/Jul/2024

The Difference Between A Disaster And Catastrophe

The old joke in Latin America  goes like this. El Presidente visits a school. He asks the class if the children know the difference between a disaster and a catastrophe. A child raises his hand and answers "Yes, El Presidente. If you and your cabinet should be in an air accident, that is a disaster. Should you survive that air accident, that is a catastrophe." 

And so that joke sprung to mind when a bullet scraped Donald Trump and did not kill him. 

For the assassin to have fired and missed, is the worst of the three outcomes of not having fired at all, and having fired and successfully killed. 

RIP Shannen Doherty (12 April 1971 - 13 July 2024)

She wasn't even my type of actress or celebrity. She was memorable because she was on a TV show that defined an epoch.  She was a public figure who was neither one thing or another for me, despite her reputation for being troublesome and quarrelsome. It seemed like you needed somebody like that to place a tough Californian chick, so that was par for the course. Even so, she wasn't Brenda Walsh for nuthin'. 

The more people like that pass away, the more you feel the passing of time. She is decidedly a very Gen-X figure.  

The Unbearable Lightness of My Wallet

The Money Loop

I've been pondering the phenomenon of sky high valuations of stocks. Way back before the GFC in the late 1990s, valuations hit a historic high and P/E ratios blew out. Then the tech bubble burst. Investors then decided that it was better to put their money into bricks and mortar, and so that led to some interesting financial engineering with mortgage bonds, and this led to a property boom that turned out to be unsustainable. That bottoming out was the GFC. And here we are again with sky high valuations on stocks. It seems we're due for another downward correction that wipes out a whole lot of real world capital formations. What's interesting this time is that P/E ratios have blown out to the high 20s for Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon and nVidia. And nobody is headed for the door before the bubble bursts. 

But then I was thinking about my superannuation account. I have it set on 100% Foreign High Growth Shares, This is because it's the easiest way to get exposure to things like the US Tech sector or Chinese manufacturing or whatever else grows in valuation like mushrooms. Every so often my employers deposits a percentage and my fund then goes out there and buys these high growth shares for me. I certainly don't imagine I'm alone - in fact the odds are pretty good that just about everybody in Australia with their superfund has exposure to these shares. And as long as there is such a thing as superannuation, the money's just going to keep dropping on these shares. Michael Burry is right, there's not going to be any price discovery on these shares any more, with all these funds shoring up the prices. Maybe that is why these sky high valuations can continue, because it's not about rational investment any more, but just passive investors outnumbering the active investors. 

In Australia at least, there is this strange loop of money. You go to the supermarket and you get price-gouged. The corporate profits bump up the share price of the supermarkets, and if you have your superannuation invested in say the ASX500, this is good for you. In a weird way, if the big end of town gouges us and scores huge profits, we still get some benefit out of that if our superannuation is in Australian Shares. The gouging becomes like an extra tax that somehow turns into an extra pension down the track for the citizen. 

Corporate Profits

Corporate Profits keep climbing. This is in spite of the cost of living going up and people not having enough money to get by. Spending is down, and the economy is teetering on a recession every time you turn on the news. Just because people's disposable income shrinks, it doesn't mean the companies looking after food and utilities don't make a ton of money. 

The Australian Treasury has something interesting to say about our Gini Coefficient.

Income inequality has remained relatively steady since 2007–08, with the Gini coefficient for equivalised household disposable income sitting at 0.32 in 2019–20. In 2020, Australia’s Gini coefficient for income indicated that Australia had the 14th highest level of inequality of the 28 OECD countries for which data was available for that year.1

Wealth is typically distributed less equally than income. Wealth inequality has remained steady over time, with the Gini coefficient for wealth increasing marginally from 0.60 in 2007–08 to 0.61 in 2019–20.

That's surprising. I did not expect that, and I wonder how they derived that figure. It suggests that if you are in the property market, it's all just musical chairs. You don't beat the market by buying somewhere special. It doesn't matter how much you're paid because chances are, you're just in the median and you make no impact on the Gini Coefficient. It's weird. We might be earning double what we used to earn, but that money has exactly half of the buying power it used to have, so your place in the pecking order hans't changed at all. It's actually hard to deliver a scenario where a first world citizenry can be better off by voting somebody in or out. 

This corresponds to the sobering reality that over the last 14 years since 2010, prices of goods have roughly doubled, and so has my salary. I don't feel a significant increase in my purchasing power at all. The ALP government is crowing about delivering tax cuts but in reality, they're making small changes to adjust my purchasing power to be roughly in line with the historic norm. This leads me to the next point.

Interest Rates Discourse Is Bunkum

During the 20 year lead up to the pandemic I came to the notion that interest rates were being artificially held down. This is because the Central Banks decided to favour investments and asset price rises over stability or equality. This resulted in the housing bubble, and in turn skewing the economy in such as way as to suck the oxygen out of the rest of the economy that has nothing to do with real estate or mining. When Vladimir Putin started his offensive against Ukraine in February 2022, while the world's economy was still emerging from the Covid Pandemic, inflation shot up and Central Banks have been running high interest rates ever since. 

The central banks do this in the name of stopping inflation, however if we the people are largely spending the same in the Gini Coefficient, is it really the local consumer pushing up prices through heated demand? Clearly it's anything but the local consumer. So all this talk of taming inflation through raising interest rates ignores the fact that inflation isn't coming from the people the higher interest rates are imposed upon.   If people are spending roughly the same portion of their disposable income on the same things in the same way they always did, then raising interest rates on them probably isn't going to change demand. 

It runs counter to the narrative that if you raise interest rates, it takes money out of people's pockets in such a way as to bring down demand and therefore inflation. They can argue - and have argued - that this is necessary, but the unchanged Gini Coefficient of Australia tells you it's not likely to change any time soon. Arguably, it's all Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping's fault we have the inflation. Why do ordinary citizens have to pay out of pocket to quell this damned inflation? With what raising interest rates costs our society, it might be cheaper to assemble a hit team to assassinate Vladimir Putin and end that lousy war in Ukraine. That might send a message to Xi Jinping to get back in the box. 

It is entirely possible that the reason inflation came down from the peak of 7.8% is because international supply chains were re-built and re-affirmed in the last 18months, and had nothing to do with the 13 interest rate hikes in 15 months. It might have been because of the corporate greed disguising their price rises as something caused by inflation, because let's face it - there have been record profits in a time marked by great cost increases.   

Just for reference, here's this discussion over in the USA about the same topic:

It's so on the money, Jon Stewart had to give up his Apple+ show over this one. 

Larry Summers: "Do you feel that Apple are somehow gouging or doing something wrong?" 

Jon Stewart: "Yes"

And right there, Jon Stewart is asked to bite the hand that feeds him that day, and he takes a solid chunk. 

Yet it needed to be said to make a point. It's not that Larry Summers is a bad guy for taking the Central Bank line - it's all the wisdom he has at his disposal. It's just that the entire discourse is fucked, as Stewart demonstrates. Apple's valuation going up USD 4000 for every American is nice for Apple. It's not like that USD 4000 rise goes immediately into people's pockets to be used. At best it goes towards people's retirement if their 401Ks have Apple shares. If Apple is indeed gouging while people are losing their homes due to interest rates going up in response to global events they can't control, then there's no real moral defence for that disparity. 

Unfortunate Developments in Music

Why Does The AI Get To Do Music?

 Absurdly, there are AI platforms that basically do art and music and your homework for you. You type in some prompts and out pops the product of a million things mangled and distilled for your liking. It's created a weird world where you might enjoy your creative pursuits but your output is insignificant next to the power of AI to just endlessly create stuff. Some of it is okay, some of it is interesting, some of it is awful and some of it is disturbing. AI music, is firmly in the disturbing camp

There's already a great quote out there saying we want AI to do the washing and laundry so that we can do the music and art; not for the AI to do the creative stuff we enjoy and in the process tug us out of our domain. It bears repeating if for no other reason that we should not lose perspective on how exactly it is that AI has come to do these creative pursuits. Pertaining to music AIs, the simple answer is that the AI Tech stole the music in order to teach their algorithms what recorded music was, and how these genres and subgenera were meant to sound. Now the labels are suing them and rightfully so. Looked at from the label's point of view, the AI Tech people have basically sampled everything and are using it to create infinite numbers of remixes. That's not going to fly. 

We'll see how all that goes. If the labels win, well, that's how the music industry's always been and if a bunch of techno bros thought they were going to bust copyright this way, they had another thin coming. If the AI Tech Bros win, I think that is going to be the final nail in the music industry. It's hard to imagine because right now nobody is exactly saying their favourite music is AI music - but you just wait and see. If the AI Tech bros win, then it's going to be a free for all - and as usual the Indie musician will lose out. 

Spotify Is Probably Going Broke

In the last year, Spotify decided it would not pay out to the small end of town. If an artist doesn't have regular listeners, they won't get paid for plays on their songs on Spotify. They set a threshold and it's 100 listens from at least 500 unique listeners. The reason they cited for doing this was to make it easier to do the accounts. It's been the talk of the virtual town square for many months now. The new regimen came into effect in April. And just like that, the small indie artists and all the experimental types were cut out.  

It's understandable on one level because they would save a lot of money if they didn't have to figure out royalties for all the minnows of the music world. At the same time, not paying people for their music being played is pretty indefensible from a copyright point of view. 

The other thing that's surfaced recently is that Spotify itself makes and publishes its own AI music. They're short, but they fill airtime. Increasingly, they are put out under fake IDs pretending to be indie artists, and in turn, it earns a portion of the money pool back to Spotify. And that makes you wonder, if Spotify wants to have its hand in the till to draw some of that cashflow into its own coffers, they must be doing it hard. it's one thing to steal from defenceless indie artists who can organise and sue Spotify, but it's another thing to be siphoning off money from the pool of money that's supposed to be share with the labels and their artists.

All this leads me to think that Spotify ain't making real coin at all. And if it keeps going this way, it's going to keel over and die when nobody invests in this Ponzi scheme anymore. 

Jimi Was Broke

There was an article doing the rounds this week about how Pete Townshend ran into Jimi Hendrix just before he died. When asked how he was doing, Jimi replied he was broke. Townshend then went on to tell the story of how he too was shortchanged by Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. Kit Lambert stole the money from The Who's earnings and bought a place in Venice. 

It's kind of strange because Jimi Hendrix also built Electric Ladyland Studios, so it seems a bit odd that he would say he was broke. He had a world class recording studio but he was also broke. Go figure. 

The issue of money and music seems to be eternal. Mozart didn't exactly become rich writing 41 symphonies and all those crowd pleasing operas.  Bach and Beethoven didn't exactly become millionaires on the back of their music even though together with Mozart, they're the most famous and influential German composers. I don't think Chopin died wealthy, nor did Schumann. Liszt and Brahms died wealthy but they seem the exception. Even in the classical world, the baseline is you don't make a whole lot of money doing music. And that's okay. 

The vaunted connection between fame and fortune are not that well entwined when it comes to music. The fact that Spotify severs that connection for the average indie musician is kind of mean - but maybe that's just what people should expect from a tech enterprise? You weren't making a gajillion bucks on Spotify anyway. We should ask ourselves what Jimi would have said about all this. 

Glory Of Democracy

The Fallout From The UK Election

It's interesting watching the aftermath of the Tories getting the boot. Just as the LNP Coalition got a firm rebuke from the electorate, the boot that go planted in the rear of Rishi Sunak's government was pretty decisive. The prevailing opinion seems to be that the combination of BoJo the Clown and his party-in-a-time-of-Covid scandal, together with Liz Truss' historically disastrous 49 day term as Prime Minister sunk the conservative vote. That might be underselling the impact of Brexit and the mishandling of the COVID  pandemic on top of the cuts made to NHS that made the entire experience much more miserable than it needed to be. 

I don't know how the UK conservatives come back from this defeat. Then again, I don't know how Peter Dutton and the Liberal Party have come back in the opinion polls after their defeat in 2022, given that he is peddling nuclear power as the panacea. Maybe in one election cycle's time, the Tories will be back peddling some insane nonsense and somehow be competitive in the polls. These things are unknowable given that we're already well down the road to Idiocracy. Stupid is more prevalent than ever before. Even though the Tories got thrown out resoundingly, there's every chance that Starmer's is a one-term Labour government. The Murdochs would be on a mission to make it so, one imagines. 

One can only hope that the Tories got thrown out because it became painfully obvious that conservatism had no place in dealing with the world as it is today. 

China Laughing At The Presidential Debate

If the debate had every progressive on the planet running for the hills, then there's one nation that took immense delight in the debate - China. From their point of view, America has a choice between the demented Biden and the psychopathic Trump. They can't laugh enough at how weak and stupid democracy is as a system. I get their point of view. After all, it must be reassuring to know they are stuck with Xi Jinping as their dictator because hey it beats having an actual debate on anything. 

For my two cents, this is exactly what is wrong with China. China's never had a proper election. Its people have never had to stare at stark choices like a demented Biden versus a psychopathic Trump. A Boris Johnson versus Jeremy Corbin. Or closer to home, a manic Mark Latham and a closet-fascist John Howard. A rebounding Kevin Rudd versus an unhinged Tony Abbott. A voter has to think about these choices and weigh them up. They might resort to just ideology or family tradition or a mountain of prejudices, but think, they must. 

When I think about the candidates I voted for in a bid to remove John Howard's government from office and the decade it took to see him gone, I can tell you each and every vote was important. It might have looked hopeless to have Kim Beazley or Simon Crean or Mark Latham as the choice against Howard, but our democracy survived those moments. We, the Australian people negotiated those terrible choices. Democracy is great, even when your side loses. In the voting booth, your vote feels puny in the face of whatever electoral reality is swirling around you, but everybody's vote counts. We the people, can - and must - own every outcome from all these elections, the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

So right now America has a choice between Biden and Trump, and that looks really bad. Sure. Yet there are ructions to say the Democrats might want somebody else that is not Biden. As bad as the optics were from the Presidential debate, democracy has every chance for renewing itself. We may not be having Biden representing the Democrats in November. Hope springs eternal. The Chinese have no such hope. They are indeed hopeless on this front. 

So I say Glory be to Democracy. 

 

News That's Fit To Punt - 05/Jul/2024

Tories No More

As an outsider, I always wondered how the Conservative Government could keep going on in the UK since 2010. It seemed to become a worse government every year, and somehow managed to hold on longer than some other good governments around the world. 14 years is a long time since Gordon Brown. Keir Starmer and his Labour party defeated the Conservatives by one of the largest landslides in UK electoral history and will form government. 

How long is 14 years? From an Australian standpoint, it's longer than the 11 years of John Howard's Liberal government and 13 years of the Hawke-Keating governments of the ALP. It's a shit of along time to be captives to a bunch of clowns that would do such terrible things as the Post-GFC Austerity, Brexit, the Covid Pandemic, Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, and followed by Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak in that role. 

It feels like there have been more British Prime Ministers than there have been Dr. Whos in the last 15 or so years. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II died on their watch, although it's hard to pin that on them, maybe there's something to that anyway. After all, imagine the despair of the late Queen in her dying days when she was presented with a freshly minted Prime Minister Liz Truss. The Truss Prime Ministership, though blindingly short, was enough to drive many to an early grave.

Theres' something in all of that which mirrors the Australian experience from 2010 to 2022. Perhaps if there is a future where history is read, the 2010s will be remembered as the decade when conservatism as a whole got found out to be rather wanting in addressing the needs of the people worldwide. ("Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton walk into a pub. The bartender says 'what is this? Some kind of joke?'")

I'm sure Starmer's government will fumble a few things and accidentally drive into the ditch of scandals, but on the whole, that is probably going to be the lesser of two evils when compared to the abject misrule by the Tories through the 2010s and halfway through the 2020s. 

Maybe The Truth Is Dawning On People?

I wrote in recent days of just what a detriment having the Hamas leadership has harmed the people of Gaza. There are finally reports this notion is burgeoning in the very people of Gaza. 

Open criticism of Hamas has been growing in Gaza, both on the streets and online.

Some have publicly criticised Hamas for hiding the hostages in apartments near a busy marketplace, or for firing rockets from civilian areas.

Residents have told the BBC that swearing and cursing against the Hamas leadership is now common in the markets, and that some drivers of donkey carts have even nicknamed their animals after the Hamas leader in Gaza - Yahya Sinwar - urging the donkeys forward with shouts of "Yallah, Sinwar!"

“People say things like, ‘Hamas has destroyed us’ or even call on God to take their lives,” one man said. 

“They ask what the 7 October attacks were for - some say they were a gift to Israel.”

Some are even urging their leaders to agree a ceasefire with Israel.

There are still those in Gaza fiercely loyal to Hamas and after years of repressive control, it’s difficult to know how far the group is losing support, or how far existing opponents feel more able to speak their mind.

Yes, the 7th October 2023 attacks essentially handed a big bat to the Israelis and they are taking their hacks. I didn't think anybody in Gaza saw it that way - seeing that the Pro-Palestinians the world-over are working very hard not to see it that way - so this is refreshing. Maybe it will be seed of realism instead of endless idealism? Who knows?

The God I Got Old Moment 1,000,001

At some point, the world ceases to be about what your generation's causes might be. Then we become old men yelling at clouds or Karens in the carpark being annoying. 

This article weirded me out. 

 What weirded me out was that it's written by a guy who wants to discuss feminism and how it is failing to win over young men. I mean, come on. It's not that the men are alienated - it's that they're disenfranchised. They got disenfranchised to give women access. Society used to rob Peter to pay Paul, but feminism made it so Peter AND Paul got robbed to pay Mary. Is this good? Is this better for the world? It's certainly been better for women, ergo in a zero-sum game for social capital, it's worse for men. However in an important way, it spreads the GDP pie better doing it this way, and certainly having women in the workforce participating at all levels has made the economy grow. It's not just an issue of social justice.  

What makes me feel old is that this process has been going on for a good 50-60 years but somebody wants to describe this as alienation and as something new for a new upcoming generation. I never understood the men who embraced feminism so actively on campus, but I figured it was a sophisticated line of chat to get laid more than being a boorish, un-reconstructed sexist pig.    

There have been experiments that show even monkeys know when they've been treated unfairly and they respond badly. It's not surprising 60% of boys have picked up on something they think is unfair. I don't think they're right to feel put out, but I can see why they feel put out. And that, makes me feel old.