Month: October 2023

I have been obstinately refusing to call Twitter by its new name, X, but I know that can't go on forever. The question is, How long can it go on?

My problem isn't that I hate X, it's that I'm not sure most people know what X is yet. So far, mainstream outlets are still largely using the formulation "X, formerly known as Twitter," which suggests they agree with me that the public at large isn't yet familiar with just a freestanding X.

Of course, you are not the public at large. So what say you? Is it time to start referring to the Musk abyss as X, full stop, or should I stick with Twitter for a while longer?

Here's what's happening in London:

London police said on Friday they had recorded a 1,353% increase in antisemitic offences this month compared to the same period last year, while Islamophobic offences were up 140% in the wake of the attack by Hamas on Israel.

....Police in the British capital ramped up patrols amid growing tensions, but said there had been 218 antisemitic offences between Oct. 1 and 18, compared to 15 in the same period in 2022. Islamophobic offences were up to 101, from 42.

And Berlin:

Modern Germany is an advanced liberal democracy: tolerant, decent, and generous. The German state is a friend to Israel and a vigilant protector of its Jewish citizens. And yet it is dangerous to wear Jewish symbols in many parts of Berlin. https://t.co/1UGigQRK4q pic.twitter.com/wSUiZMF31y

— David Frum (@davidfrum) October 22, 2023

And Paris and New York City:

An unprecedented 1,200% escalation in online calls for violence against Israel, Zionists, and Jews in the chilling aftermath of the IDF Swords of Iron operation against Hamas was seen in a new report. The statistics were collected between October 7-10, 2023....This period saw 157,000 recorded antisemitic posts, indicating a 450% increase from the prior four days.

...A geographical dive into the data reveals Paris as the most active hub for the dissemination of antisemitic hate speech from October 7-10. Following Paris, cities like New York, Buenos Aires, Santiago, and Los Angeles also show significant activity in this regard.

The world is awash in hatred and tribalism. I don't think anyone can consider this surprising, but neither is it something we can ignore.

This was all over social media last night:

Michigan State apologized Saturday night for playing a pregame trivia video that showed an image of Adolf Hitler on the Spartan Stadium scoreboard before its game against Michigan, which the Spartans lost 49-0. The image of Hitler’s face flashed on the screen alongside a trivia question asking about his home country.

For those of you who aren't history buffs, Hitler was born and raised in Austria. Surprise!

But I have a question. Was this supposed to be offensive in general? Or only because it popped up while Hamas terrorists are killing Israelis?

Because I honestly don't quite get the outrage. Are games of trivia no longer allowed to have questions about Hitler? That seems excessive. Or is it just that Michigan State should have had the good sense to know the timing was bad?

Any help here?

POSTSCRIPT: Huh. Twitter wouldn't allow me to post the picture of Hitler.

The US government, the Associated Press, and the Wall Street Journal have all now concluded that the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza was hit not by an Israeli bomb but by an errant Hamas rocket meant for Israel. It also turns out that the hospital building itself is largely intact and the death toll is in the range of 100-300, not "over 500." The rocket exploded in an outdoor courtyard where refugees were huddled.

The lesson here is obvious: don't jump to conclusions and don't believe everything that combatants in wartime tell you. Not everything in the real world moves at internet speed, and it's hardly overtaxing your patience to wait two or three days before forming outraged opinions.

Armond White, National Review's culture critic, doesn't like the movie version of Taylor Swift's Eras tour. In fact, he doesn't like Taylor Swift. That's fair enough. She's not everyone's cup of tea, especially if you aren't part of her young-white-women demographic—which White decidedly isn't.

But what on earth is this supposed to mean?

The Eras Tour is the most calamitous movie event since Barbie. It’s in the mode of post-Madonna, post-Obama mind control. The Taylor Swift industry would like us to believe that the world is not crumbling and that Swift’s prominence comes from her being a great artist. Yet girls who don’t know Jane Austen, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, or Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” fall for Swift’s narcissistic display. It prevents them from realizing their desperation — the loneliness at the scary heart of Kardashian peer pressure and FOMO.

"Since Barbie" means "since July," so one might wonder just how calamitous Eras really is. But at least that sentence is comprehensible. I genuinely have no idea what the other sentences mean.

The rest of the piece is largely the same. White's real gripe is a common one among professional conservatives: They just can't stand art that has progressive themes of any kind—in this case the fact that Swift supports the Equal Rights Amendment. White is also inexplicably furious that teenage girls don't generally have sophisticated taste in music. Go figure.

I myself don't much care for Taylor Swift's music, but I admire her work ethic. Every review I've read of her Eras show gushes about how fans get their money's worth: the show is long, the staging is extravagant, there are great guests, and lots of costume changes. Whatever else you can say about her, she seems to respect her audience.

I keep hearing demands for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, mainly from the pro-Palestinian left. Generally speaking there's nothing wrong with this. As Churchill said, jaw-jaw is better than war-war.

But is there any reason at all to think that Hamas would agree to a ceasefire? I mean, neither would Israel, but the demand implies that only Israel is standing in the way of jaw-jaw. Does anybody have the slightest evidence for this?

From New Scientist:

A radio wave has hit Earth after travelling through space for 8 billion years. @AlexWilkins22 says it's the oldest fast radio burst ever detected, with enough energy to microwave a bowl of popcorn twice the size of our Sun ????☀️

I'm fascinated by the analogies science writers use. You know, the moon is four million football fields away or a volcano is equal to a thousand H-bombs or whatnot. And I always wonder: does the analogy help? Is four million football fields any more understandable than 240,000 miles?

But this one is truly spectacular. I mean, first of all, how did they figure out how much energy it would take to pop a sun-sized bowl of popcorn? Linear extrapolation from a one ounce bag? And by "twice the size" of the sun do they mean twice the diameter? Twice the volume? These things matter. How long would it take? And are we talking about a sun-sized bowl of raw popcorn or is this the size of the finished product? How much salt and butter would it require? And how long would it take to eat if every human on earth helped out?

There are more questions than answers here. On a helpfulness scale of 1-10, I judge this analogy a zero.

What with the House in chaos, there hasn't been much action on the "Biden crime family" front these days. But today the House Oversight Committee released BOMBSHELL evidence that Joe Biden received $200,000 from his brother James in 2018. This came ON THE SAME DAY that James Biden received $200,000 from a hospital company he had partnered with:

???? BREAKING ????

We have found a $200,000 DIRECT payment to Joe Biden.
@RepJamesComer lays out the money trail. ???? pic.twitter.com/0vq3lqhRHz

— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) October 20, 2023

I guess that does it. Shady Joe Biden is part of the crime syndicate after all.

Except.......it turns out that Joe had loaned his brother $200,000 a few weeks earlier. When his brother got the money he needed to repay him, he did. That's, um, about all there is to this. There's no special reason to think that the money James Biden got was illegal, nor any reason to suppose that Joe knew where the money came from anyway. He just helped his brother out and then got repaid six weeks later.

These guys are such clowns.

The New York Times printed excerpts from a focus group of Trump leaners today—though I have to say that the participants mostly struck me as more than just leaning. Maybe they weren't all MAGAnauts, but they were pretty devoted to Trump.

In any case, the whole thing is worth reading for the smh value, but one non-Trump thing that stood out to me was the fact that at least half the group spontaneously complained about how much everything cost:

You’re working more, but less money is coming in....Just the cost of everything....The cost of living is not consistent with wages anymore....There’s no money coming in to the average American....I’m worried about the cost of living.

As you all know, none of this is true. Both prices and wages have gone up at about the same rate since before the pandemic, so the cost of living is a wash. But that's not what a lot of people see.

In other results, most of the participants felt the country was less safe than it was at the end of the Obama presidency and that Trump was a strong guy who got things done. Neither of these things is true. Trump rather famously accomplished little, and crime has dropped pretty steadily since 2016:

But none of this matters. People believe what they want to believe—or what Fox News tells them. And then, having "done their research," they're off to the polls.

You know what I'd like? I'd like a qualified linguist with a good ear to listen to a Joe Biden speech and report back.

A couple of weeks ago I spent some time doing this, and Biden's problem is that his speech really does sound a little slurred at times. My amateur conclusion was that he had problems enunciating his unvoiced fricatives, which suggests not a cognitive problem but only that his vocal cords have loosened with age.

However I'm not a linguist and I very definitely don't have a good ear. I sure wish someone who was both would provide a professional opinion about this.