- So, for those of you who know Germaine, somewhat, and his philosophical political stance, who would he lock up if he could??
- This Snowflake is curious to know.
Thursday, July 6, 2023
Since I was tempted.........
News bits: Crackpots with guns look for targets; Clueless MSM stooges; Mars science
From the Armed Radical Right Crackpot Files: The AP writes:
Former President Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was the home address of former President Barack Obama on the same day that a man with guns in his van was arrested near the property, federal prosecutors said Wednesday in revealing new details about the case.
Taylor Taranto, 37, who prosecutors say participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, kept two firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition inside a van he had driven cross-country and had been living in, according to a Justice Department motion that seeks to keep him behind bars.
On the day of his June 29 arrest, prosecutors said, Taranto reposted a Truth Social post from Trump containing what Trump claimed was Obama’s home address. In a post on Telegram, Taranto wrote: “We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.”
It's good to see patriots patrolling the streets looking for traitors to murder. ☹️
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From the Clueless MSM Files: A chart that Axios published shows just how jaw-droppingly clueless the MSM still is about what the Republican Party has become over time.
Based on a statistical model that seems way
out of synch with modern reality
In my opinion, the 0 line should be
~1 or 2 units to the left, i.e.,
there's no way in hell that the Roberts
and Kavanaugh radicals are centrists
On multiple occasions I have mentioned the Overton Window and how decades of radical right propaganda has intentionally dragged it far to the right while smearing and slandering Democrats and liberals. The Overton window identifies the ideas that define the range of acceptability of governmental policies. In this view, politicians usually act only within the acceptable range. Shifting the Overton window involves proponents of policies outside the window persuading the public to expand the window.
Why blatant lies are effective
The video shows how things that used to be considered and shunned fringe crackpottery in the GOP, now controls and dominates among party elites and has dragged the Window far to the right. Most rank and file supporters of the Republican Party and its dominant ideologies simply do not believe they support authoritarian capitalist autocracy-plutocracy or Christian theocracy. If they understood what they supported, most would probably back away if the Democrats had not been so badly smeared and slandered by decades of divisive, distrust-fomenting radical right propaganda.
From what I can tell, there are now two major Overton Windows in American society. One is the center to center-right, mildly pro-democracy Democratic Party and its supporters and the other is the extreme right, authoritarian anti-democracy Republican Party and its supporters.
We live in interesting times.
Arendt on the effects of totalitarian propaganda
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Mars update: Ars Technica writes:
InSight lander
Mars has liquid guts and strange insides, InSight suggestsWobbles in its rotation are difficult to explain without a liquid coreMars appears to be a frozen expanse of red dust, gaping craters, and rocky terrain on the outside—but what lies beneath its wind-blasted surface? NASA’s InSight lander might have discovered this before it took its proverbial last breaths in a dust storm.
Whether the core of Mars is solid or liquid has been long debated. While there is no way to observe the Martian core directly, InSight tried. Its seismometer, SEIS, was the first instrument to find possible evidence of a liquid core. In the meantime, its RISE (Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment) instrument had been measuring minuscule changes in the planet’s rotation as it orbited, “wobbles” in its axis caused by the push and pull of the Sun’s gravity.
“Our analysis of InSight’s radio tracking data argues against the existence of a solid inner core and reveals the shape of the core, indicating that there are internal mass anomalies deep within the mantle,” write the researchers behind the instrument in a study recently published in Nature.
RISE works by transmitting radio signals to Earth. By tracking changes in these signals, researchers can detect extremely small changes in its location relative to our receivers. These changes are caused by wobbles in Mars’ rotation called nutations. The distance and direction in which the axis moved because of these nutations can be used to infer information about Mars’ internal composition.
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
In defense of dark free speech: Another radical right judge goes rogue
Recent rogue Supreme Court cases continue to show the unprincipled, authoritarianism of the radical right. Major lawsuits have been decided based on (i) fake, non-existent evidence of damages, (ii) parties that lack standing, (iii) blatant rejection of settled precedent (stare decisis in legalese), (iv) made-up, cherry picked tests for legality, and (v) barely-existent or non-existent legal basis for a decision.
The authoritarian rot in the federal courts is spreading and deepening. The newest example is from a federal trial court judge who, without any recognized legal basis has relied on a false, crackpot conspiracy theory to attack federal efforts to deal with dark free speech in social media. The conspiracy alleges the federal government has conspired with social media to suppress 'conservative' free speech online. That crackpottery is close to the same level of depravity as the debunked '2020 election was stolen' crackpottery. The NYT writes:
Federal Judge Limits Biden Officials’ Contacts With Social Media SitesA federal judge in Louisiana on Tuesday restricted the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms about broad swaths of content online, a ruling that could curtail efforts to combat false and misleading narratives about the coronavirus pandemic and other issues.
The order, which could have significant First Amendment implications, is a major development in a fierce legal fight over the boundaries and limits of speech online.
It was a victory for Republicans who have often accused social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube of disproportionately taking down right-leaning content, sometimes in collaboration with government. Democrats say the platforms have failed to adequately police misinformation and hateful speech, leading to dangerous outcomes, including violence.
Rogue dictator party Trump judge Doughty
The radical right's effort to defend and promote dark free speech
Like dictators and plutocrats of the past, America's radical right authoritarian movement recognizes the necessity of allowing unfettered dark free speech to flourish to disinform, divide and distract the public. The rise and influence of big social media as a speech platform makes it necessary for the dictators, theocrats and plutocrats to inject their poison there. Honest speech is a major barrier and antidote to dark free speech. Simply put, social media has to be poisoned to advance the authoritarian's anti-democracy and anti-inconvenient truth agenda.
In his ruling, Trump judge Terry Doughty (US District Court in Louisiana) imposed an injunction that the Department of Health and Human Services, FBI and some other agencies, could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.” The rogue wrote that “if the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition.”
So far, there is no solid evidence of any federal government effort to collude with social media to illegally suppress radical right dark free speech. The Biden administration knows that under current law, it cannot interfere with what content social media sites allow on their platforms. At most, some publicly available emails and text messages were instances where federal officials complained to social media executives about influential crackpots spreading disinformation, particularly involving the coronavirus pandemic. Complaining about dark free speech does not amount to suppression of anyone's free speech, dark or honest.
Alleging the government has suppressed conservative speech online is a bullshit lie on a staggering scale. It is in the same class of bullshittery as the 2020 election was stolen lie. The point of this lawsuit is to revoke the capacity of big social media to police the content on their own sites. In the past and at present, the 1st Amendment free speech clause was intended to keep government from silencing speech, not private entities like social media platforms.
Other radical right states have filed federal lawsuits to achieve the same goal. For example, Republican attorneys general in Texas and Florida are now defending in courts state laws that prevent internet sites from taking down certain political content. All of these lawsuits are intended to reach the Supreme Court in the hope that it will rule that dark free speech cannot be restricted on big social media sites. In addition to that, radical Republicans in the House are also fight to defend and expand the influence of dark free speech as best they can. The House is inundating anti-dark free speech universities and think tanks with oppressive requests for information and subpoenas.
In view of the mountain of evidence, there is no reasonable basis to deny or mistake this for anything other than what it is. The dictator party (GOP), authoritarian radical right extremists and various crackpot groups are fighting hard to expand the scope and influence of dark free speech in society and politics. This is another major prong in the American authoritarian attack on democracy, inconvenient truth and an informed electorate.
Qs: Does defense of dark free speech feel like a small, medium or large concern or threat related to defense of democracy and inconvenient truth? Is this just a kerfuffle in a teapot, or something much more dangerous?
Monday, July 3, 2023
Neuroscience: Brain synchrony
From the We're on the Same Wavelength Files: A Scientific American article:
Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact
The minds of social species are strikingly resonantCollective neuroscience, as some practitioners call it, is a rapidly growing field of research. An early, consistent finding is that when people converse or share an experience, their brain waves synchronize. Neurons in corresponding locations of the different brains fire at the same time, creating matching patterns, like dancers moving together. Auditory and visual areas respond to shape, sound and movement in similar ways, whereas higher-order brain areas seem to behave similarly during more challenging tasks such as making meaning out of something seen or heard. The experience of “being on the same wavelength” as another person is real, and it is visible in the activity of the brain.Such work is beginning to reveal new levels of richness and complexity in sociability. In classrooms where students are engaged with the teacher, for example, their patterns of brain processing begin to align with that teacher's—and greater alignment may mean better learning. Neural waves in certain brain regions of people listening to a musical performance match those of the performer—the greater the synchrony, the greater the enjoyment. Couples exhibit higher degrees of brain synchrony than nonromantic pairs, as do close friends compared with more distant acquaintances.
But how does synchrony happen? Much about the phenomenon remains mysterious—even scientists occasionally use the word “magic” when talking about it.Given that synchronized experiences are often enjoyable, researchers suspect this phenomenon is beneficial: it helps us interact and may have facilitated the evolution of sociality. This new kind of brain research might also illuminate why we don't always “click” with someone or why social isolation is so harmful to physical and mental health.
The article goes on to describe an experiment where a person in one of two fMRI machines 130 miles apart were talking to each other in 30 second time periods. They made up an evolving story in their time allotments. Over time, their brains came into synchrony.
It that magic? Of course not. As the image above indicates, when people do not interact, their brains do not synchronize. From the jointly made-up story experiment, it is clear that brain synchrony can arise from two people talking over the phone. One can imagine that synchrony can also arise from watching other people.
So, when I talk about politics originating in cognitive biology and social behavior, don't underestimate the social behavior part. This line of research shows that social interaction directly influences cognitive biology when brain synchrony comes into play.
Think about that a moment. Consider a person unconsciously cognitively biased about an issue talking politics with an person unbiased, e.g., unfamiliar, with that issue. Could the unconscious biased brain influence the unbiased brain via synchrony? I can't see why that would be impossible. And, consider the data from bats summarized in the picture below:
Friend bat brains synchronize
more than non-friend brains
In my opinion, if one does not understand at least some cognitive biology and social behavior science, one cannot understand politics.
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