Monday 9 September, 2024
Stoned
Taken on the north shore of Galway Bay, with the ‘moonscape’ of the Burren in the far distance. The cairn was built by person or persons unknown. But it was asking to be photographed!
Quote of the Day
”Anyone can make a political case so compelling that he or she can’t see the flaws in it.”
Henry Farrell
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Chet Atkins, Leo Kottke and Doc Watson | Last Steam Engine Train
Really fine example of the emergent properties of three great guitarists when you put them together.
Long Read of the Day
There is no “woke mind virus”
Striking essay by Dan Williams about the pernicious idea that if people disagree with you they must be suffering from the cerebral equivalent of Covid.
In the past several years, talk of the “woke mind virus” has itself gone viral among right-wing culture warriors. In a recent interview, Elon Musk alleged that the mind virus had even killed his child. What he meant was not that it had actually killed his child—they are very much alive—but that his child is transgender and so, apparently, dead to him.
According to Musk, he was “essentially tricked into signing documents” allowing his child to take puberty blockers, which “are actually just sterilization drugs.” This experience radicalised him: “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.”
The only polite term for this delusion is horseshit. Or, as Williams puts it,
Ideas, including bad ones, are not infectious mind viruses. This metaphor rests on an inaccurate picture of human psychology and social behaviour that functions to demonise, not understand. Because of this, it poisons public debate, increases polarisation, and hinders our collective capacities to understand the world and each other.
Great essay. Worth your time if you are as irritated by culture wars as I am.
So tech titans are not above the law after all
Yesterday’s Observer column
On 24 August, a Russian tech billionaire’s private jet landed at Le Bourget airport, north-east of Paris, to find that officers of the French judicial police were waiting for him. He was duly arrested and whisked away for interrogation. Four days later he was indicted on 12 charges, including alleged complicity in the distribution of child exploitation material and drug trafficking, barred from leaving France and placed under “judicial supervision”, which requires him to check in with the gendarmes twice a week until further notice.
The mogul in question, Pavel Durov, is a tech entrepreneur who collects nationalities the way others collect air miles. In fact it turns out that one of his citizenships is French, generously provided in 2021 by France’s president, Emmanuel Macron. Durov is also, it seems, a fitness fanatic with a punishing daily regime. “After eight hours of tracked sleep,” the Financial Times reports, “he starts the day ‘without exception’ with 200 push-ups, 100 sit-ups and an ice bath. He does not drink, smoke, eat sugar or meat, and saves time for meditation.” When not engaged in these demanding activities, he has also found time to father more than 100 kids as a sperm donor and to rival Elon Musk as a free-speech extremist.
Media profiles of Durov bring to mind Churchill’s celebrated description of Russia as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. Durov left Russia because the Facebook clone he co-founded with his brother Nikolai in 2006 led to conflict with the Kremlin…
Later…
This from the New York Times:
Telegram has become a global sewer of criminal activity, disinformation, child sexual abuse material, terrorism and racist incitement, according to a four-month investigation by The New York Times that analyzed more than 3.2 million Telegram messages from over 16,000 channels. The company, which offers features that enable criminals, terrorists and grifters to organize at scale and to sidestep scrutiny from the authorities, has looked the other way as illegal and extremist activities have flourished openly on the app.
The degree to which Telegram has been inundated by such content has not been previously reported. The Times investigation found 1,500 channels operated by white supremacists who coordinate activities among almost one million people around the world. At least two dozen channels sold weapons. In at least 22 channels with more than 70,000 followers, MDMA, cocaine, heroin and other drugs were advertised for delivery to more than 20 countries.
And this fascinating account by Politico on how the French authorities closed in on Durov.
My commonplace booklet
**Intel’s problems in a nutshell:
Intel doesn’t have the best manufacturing
Intel doesn’t design the best chips
Intel is out of the game in AI
Devastating summary by Ben Thompson, who for a long time had been giving Intel the benefit of the doubt.
Linkblog
Something I noticed, while drinking from the Internet firehose.
Churchill: the naked truth
He made quite an impression during his time as the guest of two presidents. The chief usher at the White House recalled that “In his room, Mr Churchill wore no clothes at all most of the time during the day.” Churchill’s bodyguard remarked how President Franklin Roosevelt knocked on the door of the prime minister’s suite during Churchill’s first White House visit in December 1941, only to find that “Winston Churchill was stark naked, a drink in one hand, a cigar in the other.” Roosevelt, clearly flustered, offered to leave, but Churchill demurred: “You see, Mr President, I have nothing to hide.” The two leaders then spoke for an hour.
From the Economist’s review of Mr Churchill in the White House by Robert Schmuhl.