Open Thread For June

Oh ye who go about saying unto each:  “Hello sailor”. Dost thou know the magnitude of thy sin before the gods? Yea, verily, thou shalt be ground between two stones.

Author: Martin R

Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, boardgamer, geocacher and father of two.

524 thoughts on “Open Thread For June”

  1. Eric, if Trump decides not to run, rather than risk suffering the ignominy of the biggest losing margin in history, who do you think the Republicans will choose to run instead?

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    1. I have no idea who the Republicans would nominate if Trump decides not to run. They have been proceeding as though Trump will be running; during primary season they did not even go through the motions of examining possible alternative candidates.

      Trump has a strong incentive to run for reelection, and win. The Office of Legal Counsel for the White House has a couple of memos (one from 1973, the other from 2000) which basically assert that a sitting President cannot be prosecuted while in office, but the moment Trump is no longer President he loses that protection. And the New York State Attorney General has a long enough list of criminal matters regarding Trump that I doubt she will have time to get through all of them before Trump dies or the statute of limitations expires, whichever comes first.

      There is a chance that Trump might suffer a serious, or even fatal, heart attack or stroke before being formally nominated. In that scenario Pence, who would become the incumbent President if Trump dies, is the most likely alternative. After the nomination, it would probably be whoever gets the nomination for Vice President. But the only situation where I see Trump dropping out would be if he drops dead, or is so obviously disabled by health issues (much more so than is currently the case) that it cannot be hidden from Republican true believers.

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  2. Local news: After fears of widespread forest fires, a welcome weather pattern has brought rain to central Sweden and will continue north.
    A peaceful BLM demonstration in Gothenburg got hijacked by a crowd of vandals a few days back, and now the police has identified at least 15 of them. Throw them in the slammer, I say.

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  3. EMA has just greenlighted remdesivir for treatment of COVID19 patients in Europe. This is very important, as the logistics of providing vaccines -if an effective vaccine is found- makes it unlikely for it to be available in sufficient amounts until maybe late 2021.

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  4. As I was sleepless, I watched a livestream with David Wood criticising Jehowa’s witnesses and was overwhelmed by how parochial their deities are.
    They worship entities that keep fit by juggling supernovae and bench-pressing galaxy clusters… and they think it will make a difference to those entities if they skip church on Sunday.

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    2. Deities generally seem particularly focused on those anatomical details, while evidently being much less concerned with trivia like child malnutrition, disease, parasites and mortality, not to mention abuse. They must know some deep fundamental universal truth that I am oblivious to.

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  5. Things Were Going to Be So Much Better.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/burden-being-part-history/613327/

    Getting through my life seemed pretty tough at various times, but looking back, my recollection is that I really had a somewhat charmed existence, on the whole. I fear that life for my daughter is going to be a lot more difficult. It is already a lot more difficult for her than it was for me at her age, and yet she has done nothing wrong, whereas I can recall all kinds of bad decisions that I made and still somehow wriggled my way through.

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    1. My wife and I are way less wealthy than our parents were at the same age. But it’s largely down to us making career choices that we knew were not going to bring wealth. I did expect academia to be much more meritocratic than it is, so that’s the one issue were I feel cheated. But still, we have the small house and the non-stressful lifestyle we both want, and we have enough money, so we’re happy.

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      1. Having lived in both, and having been put in the position of having a lot of material possessions like furniture, paintings, etc. (including some genuine antiques, rumoured to be valuable, but when you try to find a buyer, no one wants that stuff, even if you try to give it away) that were left to me by relatives who died, I am completely convinced that it is very much better to live in a small home rather than a big one, and the fewer possessions you can accumulate , the better off you are. All of that stuff is just a mill stone around your neck, and getting rid of it all can be very difficult – I really wish people had just not left me all of their old junk. Leave me cash money, fine, but there has been a noticeable lack of that. Material possessions? No thanks – the fewer of those, the better.

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      2. Sweden has an excellent give-stuff-away website. People show up almost immediately and collect stuff you want to get rid of.

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      3. My town had a decent way of freecycling stuff pre-COVID (an annual spring cleanup and a swap shop), but that’s been on hold due to the pandemic.

        Obligatory: George Carlin’s routine, “A Place for My Stuff”. As Carlin wisely observed, “A house is a place for you to put your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.”

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  6. Astronomical events are mercifully immune to human folly. There is a lunar eclipse coming up, people in North and South America will be able to see it the night 4-5 july.

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  7. You need something to cheer up!
    *Happy bubbly opening funtime!* (parodi)”Kotoura-san Abridged Episode 02”
    -I keep confusing the animes of Kotoura and Haruhi because the male protagonist looks the same (and the parodies have the same voice actor)
    (Haruhi is the one where the girl is an Elder God without being aware of it)

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  10. “Trump’s team tries to brand Biden as senile — after president struggles to walk down a ramp”
    They are both basket cases, but Biden is starting from a much higher level.
    .
    I want to send the dude from “Se7en” after Christer Gardell, to explain that ‘greed’ is a mortal sin.

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  11. Martin, YuSie might get a fair bit out of the podcast between Razib Khan and Dr Emily Deans on Psychiatry and Genes dated 12 June 2020. Deans is a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, but she says a lot of stuff about things that affect people mentally that really surprised me – simple things like iron deficiency or whatever, that could be relevant, and she talks about therapy as well as drug treatments. There’s a lot in there, she talks like a machine gun and a lot of it is frankly very hard for me to follow – I would need multiple listenings to try to get it all.

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  13. China’s military approves vaccine for use on its soldiers https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/jun/29/coronavirus-live-news-us-health-secretary-warns-window-closing-on-chance-to-curb-covid-19-as-global-deaths-pass-500000?page=with:block-5ef9c8538f081161271198a4#block-5ef9c8538f081161271198a4
    -My assumption is that this first vaccine is lesss than perfect, but the Chinese army considers it better than nothing as the army may be called in to help in cities with new disease clusters.

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    1. Maybe not less than perfect, it might turn out to be perfectly OK (or it might not), but it hasn’t gone through third stage trials. China has legal provision to approve a vaccine or drugs for treatment for “emergency use” before all trials have been fully completed. They have been talking about doing that with a vaccine, and it sounds like that is what they have now done. The PLA has a large and well equipped medical corps, so I think your assumption is probably correct.

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  16. Hell just froze over.
    A French former prime minister has just been sentenced to five years for corruption.
    I thought French politicians had to show a certificate of absolute corruption before even being taken seriously as candidates for either PM or president. I remember Mitterrand and Jaques Chiraq too well.

    There is also some online stuff about American scientists being alarmed by the volume of pseudoscience and desinformation in the media, but I am too tired to summarize it right now.

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  18. The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.

    This is not a book recommendation – far from it. I don’t buy what this geezer is selling at all. And in the current climate, he could find himself distinctly unpopular – in fact I find it hard to imagine a worse time to release a book like this.

    Jared Diamond had his share of critics, me among them, but in the broad sweep I think he was much closer to the truth with Guns, Germs and Steel.

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  19. Yay, thunderstorms and rain!

    I got bored and checked Genesis 12: Abram (incorrectly called ‘Abraham’ by xians) sets off to Caanan with his wife/half-sister Sarai and his slaves (!).
    He is promised the country by Zod, because the current Caananites are descended from a son of Noah who saw his drunk father naked. Soo… therefore, the Caananites must be bad.
    There is a famine, so Abram abandons ‘his’ land and goes to Egypt with his wife/half-sister Sarai (who is now 70 years old).
    Pharaoh thinks Sarai is hot, he shacks up with her and in exchange Abram gets land, slaves and camels (which have not yet been domesticated). Abram is a pimp?

    As Abram comes from Mesopotamia we can date this passage to after the Babylonian captivity when Jews incorporated chaldean ideas into their religion (by this time, camels were indeed domesticated)

    I am glad I stumbled over this passage in the OT – making fun of the quran is no challenge. And now I am an equal-opportunity defiler of scripture.

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    1. Somewhere in the course of the story Abram changed his name to Abraham, but I do not recall offhand when or why that happened.

      Abram didn’t have any children with Sarai, so he took a second wife, Hagar, who bore him a son, Ishmael. Then (surprise!) Sarai got pregnant and gave birth to Isaac, whereupon Abram sent Hagar and Ishmael away. Later, Abram got instructions from God to kill his son, and almost did it, but God told him at the last minute not to go through with it. Not a nice guy, that Abram.

      Oddly enough, the modern Hebrew form of the name is Avram (derived from Abram), while the Arabic form is Ibrahim (derived from Abraham).

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      1. Avram Davidson’s short-story collection The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy is one of my favourite books. Ruritanian supernatural detective stories.

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      2. God said to Abraham “Kill me a son.”
        Abe said “Man, you must be puttin’ me on.”
        God said “Abe”, Abe said “What?”
        God said “You can do what you want but
        The next time you see me comin’, you better run.”
        Abe said “Where you want this killin’ done?”
        And God said “Out on Highway 61.”

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  20. Respiratory droplets -without wind- travel between 8 and 13 feet before evaporating or escaping. So six feet is NOT enough for social distancing.
    .
    Spoiler. The protagonists of ‘Girls’ Last Tour’ do not survive. And humanity goes extinct.
    I don’t know if this is some cultural barrier, but I find this anime a downer, regardless of how well- made it was.

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  21. When inhabitants in the Italian town Vo were tested (85% of the population) it turned out over 40% who were positive had no symptoms.
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    Authors often use pseudonyms. Is fantasy author Terry Goodkind named Dirk Bad’un ?

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    1. But were they pre-symptomatic (i.e. in the rather long incubation period), or did they remain asymptomatic throughout the course of the illness? And what proportion now carry antibodies?

      A few things that are really irritating me:

      1. Still no one has tested how long coronavirus particles remain alive on surfaces. Tests have shown that some parts of its genome remain on some types of surfaces for a long time, but they didn’t test whether those were live virus, or just bits of dead virus. It makes a world of difference. This is really not difficult to do – give my daughter a lab and some samples of live virus, and she could do it by herself. And no one has tested how longevity of live virus on various surfaces is affected by temperature and humidity, although it has been determined that exposure to ultraviolet light kills it pretty fast. None of this is rocket science – why has no one done it?

      2. There are endlessly conflicting reports about the proportion of people who are infected but asymptomatic when tested. Some studies have shown that those people infected very few others, while other studies have shown that pre-symptomatic people become highly infectious a couple of days before they develop symptoms. Someone really needs to sort all of this out, because it is very important. I don’t see anyone doing a holistic investigation – maybe because everyone is doing their own thing and there is no centrally coordinated cooperation.

      3. It is far from clear what proportion of people who have been infected carry antibodies afterwards, and how long they last. So no one knows if catching it and recovering confers immunity or not, and if so how long that immunity lasts. This is a question of very pressing importance.

      4. News media in Australia have questioned whether someone can legally decline to be tested for Covid-19. AFAIAC this should not even be up for discussion. Can someone legally decline to be searched for carrying a concealed bomb in public? Is that some infringement of inviolable human rights, like the right to infect other people with a potentially fatal disease? What are people using for brains?

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  28. Emo depressing opening sadtime!
    ”Kotoura-san Abridged Episode 04”

    If you recall ‘True Blood’ you will remember being a telepath is not good for your social life.

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  32. First arrests using the new Chinese law have been done in HK. It is apparently enough to say Taiwan should remain an independent state to break the law.
    .
    A nearby red dwarf star (Lacaille 9352 aka GJ 887) doesn’t emit flares or harmful radiation — so its planets might have atmospheres. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01905-5

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    1. Stop making or proliferating fake news, Birger. Two people have been arrested for carrying signs calling for independence for Hong Kong, which is a clear breach on the new national security law. They were given clear and fair warning by the Police that they were breaking the law and were given the opportunity to desist, but they persisted, so
      they were arrested.

      Repeat: it is not OK just to make shit up and proliferate it, or to pick up made up shit from other people and proliferate it. If you can’t fact check it before repeating it, don’t repeat it. You will see any amount of this stuff.

      I have read the new law in full. It makes no mention of Taiwan. If you haven’t read the new law in full, you might not want to pontificate about it. If you are not a legal expert, particularly in Chinese and HK law, you might not want to supply your own interpretation of what it says.

      Well, you can do whatever you like, but with this kind of stuff, you are hindering and obfuscating, not helping.

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  35. So far, seven people have been arrested under the new national security law, some for carrying signs in public calling for HK independence, and some for carrying offensive weapons (noting that umbrellas do not qualify as offensive weapons) which I presume breaches the prohibition of acts of terrorism, which seems reasonable. (One Police Officer has already been stabbed today.)

    Explainer: Most countries, with the exception of a very small and dwindling number of tinpot banana republics, recognize the People’s Republic of China as the “one China” (including the EU, and including the USA, despite anything Trump and Pompeo might say) and do not recognize Taiwan as an independent state calling itself the Republic of China (which is self-evidently ridiculous). The same goes for the United Nations and its various subsidiary branches. So, if you want to insist that Taiwan is an independent state, you have your work cut out for you to convince almost the whole world that you are right and they are wrong.

    The new national security legislation relating to HK is concerned solely with HK, and does not concern itself with Taiwan, which is covered under the existing national security legislation.

    This is because after the return of HK to Chinese sovereignty, under the Basic Law (which was signed off on by the UK), Article 23, HK is required to enact its own national security legislation, because the existing legislation is hopelessly fragmented, anachronistic and refers to “Her Majesty”, so it is clearly inapplicable. We have had 23 years in which to do that, but we didn’t do it. So, after the extreme violence and industrial grade vandalism that took place in HK last year, which really shocked the Central People’s Government, they determined that they needed to do what HK had failed to do and pass a new law as an extension to China’s existing national security law, and that is what they have done.

    It doesn’t mention Taiwan. It doesn’t need to, and besides it would be an irrelavance to insert it into legislation that is specifically concerned with HK.

    So, is it true, as alleged above that “It is apparently enough to say Taiwan should remain an independent state to break the law.”? No. That would not even be dealt with under the new law.

    The new security law contains protections of human rights and freedom of speech – worth just pointing that out for those who have not read it. So just talking about the status of Taiwan would not constitute an offence under this law, and anyone who claims that doing so would get you arrested is either lying or talking out of his/her arse.

    I was hoping not to have to talk about any of this, because it is not my job to act as gatekeeper on fake news relating to China, but I have an aversion to people peddling obvious falsehoods.

    I don’t know why the whole world seems to think that HK is their concern. It isn’t. There is a suitable Cantonese expression: m’gwaan nei si – not your business.

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    1. How many data points from burials in the Balkans and Anatolia would be required to sort out how the steppe component of the DNA got there? With all the mountains, the area must be quite a mosaic of separate groups.

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  41. Sabio Guadelupe et al have found a cause for liver cancer (the second greatest cause of cancer-related death).

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  42. In phone calls to Angela Merkel, Trump has called her ‘stupid’ ( the German chanchellor with a Ph.D. in quantum chemistry).

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  43. The claims about Russians offering money for killing Americans need to be seen with a lot of skepticism- some of the information comes from the Afghan government, who definitely do not want American troops to leave. A hawkish reaction to the allegations would server them well.
    -The bridge between Sweden and Denmark had its 20th birthday today. Ironically, it has little traffic as the Danes fear Swedish travellers bringing the virus.
    -The alpine rodent population has collapsed as the mild winter made their underground passages too damp. Alpine foxes, owls and other species who depend on rodents will suffer. Some of those species are endangered.

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