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Monday, November 28, 2022Music WeekExpanded blog post, November archive (final). Tweet: Music Week: 43 albums, 7 A-list, Music: Current count 39159 [39116] rated (+43), 33 [33] unrated (+0: 5 new, 28 old). First half last week I spent thinking about cooking a little something for Thanksgiving dinner. We wound up with five people. I bought a pound of ground turkey and two of hamburger. I mixed the former with chopped spinach and feta cheese, and added a little butter and garlic powder to both. The idea was to cook them on the little-used gas grill, but it didn't heat up, so my fallback was frying pans indoors. They both came out very well done, but with a lot of tasty brown. Topped them with smoked gouda and havarti, and had bacon, red onion, and pickles to add. Sides were baked beans (topped with bacon), Russian potato salad (with olives, red onion, smoked salmon, and dill), and Spanish slaw (with carrots, red bell pepper, and golden raisins). Had spice cake for dessert, with store-bought butter pecan ice cream. I'm learning to settle for relatively simple dishes that don't kill me. Not quite as good as the birthday dinner, but fit the bill, and didn't leave us with a lot of leftovers. Second half of the week felt like a void. I finally opened up a file for Speaking of Which, figuring I'd just copy down a few links for future reference -- sort of a placeholder, with few if any comments. But on Sunday I made the rounds, and often couldn't help but write something. Rarely as much as I could, but this sort of analysis is all but second nature these days. One nice thing about the meal was that I got a chance to talk shop with my nephew. He's been using some kind of AI software to generate images. I had a fairly serious interest in AI back in the 1980s, but haven't followed it much since then. Still, I have some ideas about what it might be good for and where it might cause more trouble than it's worth, so it was good to compare my thoughts with his actual experience. [PS: I added a link to yesterday's post, as part of Vox's "World to Come" series: AI experts are increasingly afraid of what they're creating. Just a thought, but if you got rid of patents and copyright for AI code, and required that all code be open source, that would slow down the pace of development, and make it harder to hide harmful applications. I also added a link to another No More Mister Nice Blog piece, about how Mike Pompeo rates the head of a teacher's union as "the most dangerous person on the planet."] A couple notes on the 17th Annual Jazz Critics Poll: Francis Davis asked to be kept informed of the voting, so I've been forwarding mail to him. I also broached the possibility of including his name on the masthead, and he said he'd be honored. I have 26 ballots counted so far, with two more weeks until deadline. I haven't had much time to go back over possible voter lists, but I'll try to do that over the next few days. The most striking thing so far is that the vote is exceptionally scattered: three albums appear on six ballots each, so 23% of the total. This compares to 2021, when James Brandon Lewis appeared on 34% of the ballots, and to 2020, when Maria Schneider scored 36%. Still early days. As I recall, there were six other leaders last year before Lewis finally broke from the pack. I've done the basic indexing for November Streamnotes, but still have the Music Weeks to compile. I've also fallen behind on the EOY Aggregate, but that's largely because the number of EOY lists doubled today. (Pro tip: I mostly use the lists collected by Album of the Year and Acclaimed Music Forums.) I want to settle on a jazz ballot by Friday. This is what my 2022 list currently looks like. No way will I have time to resample everything on it, so I'm stuck with my memory and spot checks. I did replay Omri Ziegele today, and dropped it a tiny bit -- probably the vocals, as almost everything else is marvelous. The EOY file has traditionally included a "2%" list of records I haven't heard but think might be worth looking for. This year I've significantly expanded that list to include everything that's gotten Jazz Critics Poll votes, even if I'd put their odds of hitting A- at much less than 2%. I may thin them out later, or just revise the explanation. A couple quick notes on the music. The Paul Smoker albums are actually remastered digital-only, so the label arguably should be to the reissue, if only there was one. In general, when I stream an album that matches an original release, I attribute it to the original label, instead of the reissue label. I have no qualms about that with streaming services, but it may be a bit unfair in this case. I've also resurrected "Limited Sampling" this week. I really wanted to hear the Dick Hyman album, but could only find fragments. I expect there will be more of these in the next few weeks. In most cases so far, they're possibly good albums that Bandcamp only has a couple tracks from. However, in the future, I may start including records that are fully available but I hit reject on. Similarly, limited sampling could mean something I've only heard a YouTube or Soundcloud single from. I don't count these as graded albums, but they do show up as heard in the EOY aggregate, with +/- notes. New records reviewed this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
Old music:
Limited Sampling: Records I played parts of, but not enough to grade: -- means no interest, - not bad but not a prospect, + some chance, ++ likely prospect.
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Sunday, November 27, 2022Speaking of WhichEarly in the week, I thought: maybe I won't have to do one of these this week. Later, I thought: well, if either of two weekly pieces I've been linking to -- Connor Echols' "Diplomacy Watch" and Jeffrey St Clair's "Roaming Charges" -- appear, I should at least include them. But it looks like they had the good sense to take the week off, even if the world didn't. Still, I have a few more pieces in tabs that I figured I should note now rather than save for next week. Then a quick round of the usual sources, and I'm close to a typical week's work. Ukraine: The war grinds on. Connor Echols skipped his usual "Diplomacy Watch" this week, but I'm not aware that he had much to write about.
Jacqueline Alemany/Josh Dawsey/Carol D Leonnig: [11-23] Jan. 6 panel staffers angry at Cheney for focusing so much of report on Trump: "15 former and current staffers expressed concern that important findings unrelated to Trump will not become available to the American public." Kate Aronoff: [11-18] Effective Altruism Is Bunk, Crypto Is Bad for the Planet, and Other Basic Truths of the FTX Crash: "The overarching lesson of sam Bankman-Fried's downfall is that the gauzy philosophical natterings of CEOs are just meant to distract us from their real goal: accumulating cash without interference." Zack Beauchamp: [11-22] How the right's radical thinkers are coping with the midterms: "The New Right emerged to theorize Trumpism's rise. Can they explain its defeat?" They mostly seem to be doubling down on the idea that the "left" secretly controls many critical institutions in America, making it all but impossible to "save America" by through democratic processes. One even urges the American right to emulate the Taliban: "The Mujahideen fighters who brought the Soviets to their knees in Afghanistan were outmanned and outgunned. And yet they removed the godless occupiers from their land." This is wrong on more levels than I can count, but illustrates the growing paranoia and attendant recklessness of what passes for thought on the far right. Geoffrey A Fowler: [11-23] It's not your imagination: Shopping on Amazon has gotten worse: "Everything on Amazon is becoming an ad." Graham Gallagher: [11-25] Elite Conservatives Have Taken an Awfully Weird Turn. Forrest Hylton: [11-25] A Historian in History: Staughton Lynd (1929-2022). Eric Levitz: [11-25] One Worrying Sign for Democrats in the Midterm Results: "The gubernatorial elections in Georgia and Ohio suggest that a right-wing Republican could win moderate voters in 2024 merely by not being Trump." A big part of the problem is that Democrats tend to focus on the "MAGA fringe" and ignore the fundamental truth: that virtually all Republicans share the same set of far-right policy preferences. Dylan Matthews: [11-22] How one man quietly stitched the American safety net over four decades: On Robert Greenstein, who founded the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in 1981. The safety net they came up with is a hodge-podge of often unclear and inadequate programs which nonetheless add up to significant help against poverty. This is part of a Vox Highlight series on The world to come, which also includes:
Mike McIntire: [11-26] At Protests, Guns Are Doing the Talking: "Armed Americans, often pushing a right-wing agenda, are increasingly using open-carry laws to intimidate opponents and shut down debate." Ian Millhiser: [11-27] A Trump judge seized control of ICE, and the Supreme Court will decide whether to stop him: "Judge Drew Tipton's order in United States v. Texas is completely lawless. Thus far, the Supreme Court has given him a pass." Prem Thakker: [11-23] Glenn Youngkin, Who Supports No Gun Control, Is Heartbroken Over Virginia Walmart Shoting; and Tori Otten: [11-23] Glenn Youngkin Blames Virginia Walmart Shooting on "Mental Health Crisis." So What's His Plan?. Adam Weinstein: [11-23] Six reasons the Afghan government utterly collapsed during US withdrawal: "A new official watchdog report sheds light on what led to the Taliban's rapid takeover last year and implications for America's future foreign policy." The list:
Given time I don't have, I could nitpick my way around these points. I suspect number 4 has less to do with inflexibility than with the fact that neither the US nor Ghani had any real popular support that needed to be recognized much less compromised with. The other points should be studied by Ukraine, lest they find themselves in a position where the US wants out and that could leave them high and dry. (That doesn't seem to be the case now, but see the Wright comment above.) Li Zhou: [11-25] The high stakes and unique weirdness of the Georgia Senate runoff, briefly explained. Found this on Twitter:
For more, here's an article: Kelly McClure: [11-23] "I'm just glad he's not gay," says father of alleged Club Q shooter: article includes Twitter link. Also quotes the father as saying: "I praised him for violent behavior really early. I told him it works. It is instant and you'll get immediate results." It also notes that the shooter legally changed his name to distance himself from this asshole. Steve M. wrote two more pieces about this (more than the story needs, but they observe the political spin): [11-23] National Review: Don't politicize the Colorado Springs shooting. The rest of the right: Well, actually . . . and, more importantly, [11-24] Bad parents are the original stochastic terrorists [PS: He's been riffing on "stochastic terrorists" lately. For another example, see: [11-21] Republicans sound like stochastic terrorists even when they're (apparently) not trying to. The occasion here is Mike Pompeo declaring that "the most dangerous person in the world" is Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers.] Also note that Steve M. continues to have his finger on the pulse of elite Republican thinking: see [11-27] Maureen Dowd's brother recites the approved GOP establishment talking opoints. Notice what's not included. In particular, he points out:
I've been saying for some time now that Richard Nixon was the godfather of the Republican Party, because he taught the party that winning is the only thing that matters, and no scruples should get in your way. The reason many prominent Republicans didn't like Trump when he was running in 2016 is because they didn't think he could win. But they voted for him anyway, and when he did win, he was not only forgiven; he was their hero. That should have lasted only until he lost in 2020, but thanks to the Big Lie, his popular support kept them in check until the 2022 loss gave them an excuse to brand him a loser -- which is really the only thing that they care about, and the one thing they think might work. However, the polls haven't caught up, in large part because rank-and-file Republicans care much less about winning than about hating the Dems and being hated in turn, which Trump still has a knack for. See: That pro-DeSantis right-wing consent won't manufacture itself. Tuesday, November 22, 2022Daily LogIan Millhiser tweeted:
In a later comment, he added: I commented:
Monday, November 21, 2022Music WeekExpanded blog post, November archive (in progress). Tweet: Music Week: 51 albums, 8 A-list, Music: Current count 39116 [39065] rated (+51), 38 [46] unrated (-8: 10 new, 28 old). On Thursday, I sent almost 200 invitations out to cast votes in the 17th Annual Jazz Critics Poll. Last year I wound up sending the invites out manually. I've been trying to think of a better method, and came up with two. The initial ballots I would send out using Thunderbird's Mail Merge option. For later notices and reminders, I figured I could use a GNU Mailman mailing list, using "mass subscription" to enroll people, and set up restrictions so only I can send further mail to the list. It took most of the day to figure out how to set those up, and a couple people got confused by the mail list, but it seems to be working fine now. As I'm writing this, I've gotten 46 acks back, and 10 ballots. Deadline will be end-of-day December 12. Results will be published at The Arts Fuse, and on my master website. I'll possibly send out a few more invites this week. I haven't had much time to try to vet candidates this weekend, especially as I knocked out another Speaking of Which column. Some of this week's records are things I was pointed to by voters. I also found a Michaelangelo Matos ballot with eight records I hadn't heard, so I checked them out: liked all of the electronica, was less taken by two prog-ish pop groups (Au Suisse, Dungen). Other news for me is that I've recently bought new keyboard, mouse, and speakers for the computer I'm typing this on. In each case the old pieces were failing: the mouse button was unreliable; the cap to one of the keyboard keys ('d') wore a hole in the middle, keeping the switch from engaging, and more keys were dropping out (especially shift states); and the right speaker was cracking up, so I had been listening to only one speaker for months (and wondering why the sound was so crap compared to the cheaper speakers on the other computer). I went with a Logitech wireless (not Bluetooth) mouse, which is a huge improvement. I'm having more trouble adjusting to the keyboard, which is a bit disappointing give how much the Keychron Q3 cost: the brown switchers have more click than I'm used to, and the backlighting can be disorienting (presumably that and everything else is programmable, but I haven't looked up how to do that through Linux). But it's very sturdily built (weighs about 6 lbs), and the keys and mechanical switches are high quality, so I doubt they'll wear down like the Logitech keyboard did. I could wind up liking it once I get use to the feel. Speakers (Creative Labs Gigaworks T40) are pretty good, too, although I haven't used them much. (I use a second computer for streaming, but downloads land on this one, and I haven't been paying them much attention.) Bonus is that I had to do some massive tidying up before I could install it all, which gave me lots of time to worry. That gives me a spot where I can organize the 2022 CDs I have in case I want to recheck any. Although I think the current grade sort on my jazz and non-jazz lists is good enough, I doubt that the A-list ranking is anywhere near right. We have minimal plans for Thanksgiving, as it's always hard to round people up, and we have no particular place to go. I thought we might just grill some hamburgers and eggplant (topped with yogurt, a Turkish thing), and make baked beans, potato salad, slaw, and a spice cake. Should be warmer than last week was, and I can fob the grilling off on a guest, so that's always a treat for me. New records reviewed this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
Old music:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Sunday, November 20, 2022Speaking of WhichSpent most of last week working on Jazz Critics Poll, enough so that I would have skipped this week had it not been for several fairly huge stories: the WWIII scare in Poland, the House falling into a Republican cesspit, Trump's announcement that he'll be glad to take your money in exchange for pretending to make yet another run for President (by the way, it's his 5th run, not his 3rd), and the death of Staughton Lynd. Other things popped up almost randomly, but I skipped over much more than I flagged. While I continue to be interested in Democratic strategy, I did skip over the House leadership turnover. In particular, I don't care whether Nancy Pelosi was a political mastermind (the word "consequential" is getting a lot of play) or a neoliberal hack who repeatedly screwed us over. Hopefully next week will be boring, with its holidays and such, and I'll be able to skip it. Margaret Carlson: [11-17] Hey, Democrats. Don't Give Up On Ohio. I'd stress that Democrats shouldn't give up on anywhere, but losing in Ohio especially hurts, because the state used to be competitive, and I don't understand why Democrats haven't done better, especially since it was the swing state in the 2004 presidential election (and they put those funny voting machines in). Sure, the steel-and-rubber belt has been in decline (for which Democrats deserve some but far from all of the blame), and southeast Ohio closely resembles West Virginia (where Democrats have been hit hardest, for reasons not entirely clear to me). On the other hand, Columbus and Cincinnati have become much more Democratic. Whether Tim Ryan was a good or bad candidate is open for argument -- my wife dislikes him intensely, but even with his retrograde politics (like his opposition to student loan forgiveness), he missed a golden opportunity in running against JD Vance, an effete phony with his Ivy League airs, his hedge fund business, and a billionaire pulling his strings. Beyond Ohio (and West Virginia), Iowa is another state the Republicans have gamed so successfully I'm inclined to suspect that something crooked is going on. Howard Dean, who coined the phrase "the democratic wing of the Democratic Party," became chair of the DNC in 2006, and immediately looked beyond his own wing to support Democrats running in all 50 states. The 2006 and 2008 elections, with Dean at the helm, were the most successful for the Party since the 1970s. After Obama won, Dean was sent packing, and Democrats had a disastrous election in 2010, much like they did in 1994 when Clinton turned the Partly leadership into his own private vassal state. Both Clinton and Obama managed to get reëlected, but the second time without any appreciable coattails, so they could pursue their pro-business strategies without concern for their traditional party bases. That was a fine strategy for their own fundraising, but left the base with bitter resentments -- some peeled off to try their luck with Trump (bad luck, of course), and many more found a way back through Bernie Sanders. Rachel M Cohen: [11-17] Anti-abortion groups don't think they lost the midterms: Well, by delivering the House to the Republicans, they'll stave off any attempt by Democrats to add abortion rights to federal law. That will in turn allow Republican states and their court allies to continue running amuck, sowing chaos and terror. I'm not sure that's much of a long-term strategy, but they did dodge a serious loss, which is about the best they could hope for given how unpopular their stand is. Conor Echols: [11-18] Diplomacy Watch: Grain deal extended as Putin signals interest in peace talks. In a week when hawks got excited by an opportunity to start WWIII, some news that suggests sanity may still be possible. Especially read the following article by Echols:
Dexter Filkins: [11-14] A dangerous game over Taiwan. Better for background than for strategic thinking, but then I doubt there is any good strategic thinking on the subject. E.g.: "Taiwan's defeat would dramatically weaken America's position in the Pacific, where US naval ships guard some of the world's busiest sea lanes." Guard them from what, pray tell? Most of the shipping in the area is to and from China. What I think should be obvious is that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be much more difficult to pull off than Russia's invasion of Ukraine, even if the US military remains disengaged, and more prone to catastrophic escalation. But China has never risked that kind of confrontation, and Taiwan is unlikely to try to provoke it. I'm not so sure about the China-haters in the US. Also on China:
Samuel Gardner-Bird: [11-15] The unipolar moment is over. When will the US get it? "These former Global South leaders don't mince words when it comes to America's diminishing leadership and the 'rules base order.'" Unfortunate, this was just a Quincy Institute colloquium, but we've heard grumblings like this in more formal forums, like last week's COP27, and the Doha round of world trade talks. Anand Giridharadas: [11-19] This Week, Billionaires Made a Strong Case for Abolishing Themselves. Starts with the obvious low-hanging fruit: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, the already-abolished crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried, and Donald Trump (who also isn't much of a billionaire). It shouldn't be hard to find similar stories among the less storied. Much harder to find exceptions (and no, I wouldn't give George Soros an automatic bye). Giridharadas has a new book, The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy. For a review, see:
Margaret Hartmann: [11-16] 7 Ways Trump's 2024 Announcement Was Totally Sad! "There was no way Trump's 2024 campaign announcement on Tuesday night was going to beat 2015's iconic, racist spectacle, but the event failed to meet even significantly lowered expectations." First thing I noticed was that there was no escalator in Mar-A-Lago. Trump's entrance was shrouded by a crowd, so you could barely see him until he stepped up on the stage. Then he went into his bored teleprompted voice, with his laundry list of absurd claims about how America was perfect back when he was President. Not quite how I remember it. I tuned out after a few minutes of that, but here's Hartman's list:
More on Trump:
William Hartung: [11-17] Corporate Weapons Heaven Is a Hell on Earth. I've often thought that the federal government should take over the arms industries, less for efficiency than to factor out the profit motive. Back in WWII, it made sense to use existing companies to ramp up production, and with cost-plus-10% contracts, everyone wanted to get in on the act. The result was the famous "arsenal of democracy," which brought the wars to a successful conclusion in remarkable time. After the war, most companies converted back to consumer products, but a few hoped to keep on the gravy train, and they started lobbying efforts to spread fear and promote massive spending on "defense" -- so much so that by 1960, Eisenhower warned that the "military-industrial complex" was becoming an autonomous force in American politics. Since then, the US has repeatedly been thrown into wars, each one adding to bottom line of the arms merchants. But as importantly, the arms merchants have taken over US foreign policy, creating a worldwide market for US arms, fueling other wars, including ones where it's impossible to discern real American interests. It seems crass to suggest that the only reason for the expansion of NATO was to expand the US arms market to Eastern Europe, but it's hard to explain otherwise. It even seems doubtful that the current war in Ukraine would have erupted had it not been for the insult and injury caused by NATO expansion: insult because expansion depended on playing up the threat posed by Russia, and injury because NATO took business away from Russia, especially their own lucrative arms industry. Also at the invaluable TomDispatch:
Bacevich has a new book of old (2016-21) essays, On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century. No doubt I've read most of them when they came out. It is far easier to show how America's worldview is myopic and dysfunctional than it is to actually convince people to open their eyes and see the world as it really is. Democrats and Republicans all have deep but different delusions about American power -- I'd say at least two sets per party -- and they have to be addressed each in turn. For Bacevich, it often suffices to show that the policies rooted in those myths do not work, and often cause even more harm, so the sane (conservative) response is to back away, to learn to exercise more restraint. However, there's another approach that may help Democrats break their kneejerk embrace of omnipotent intervention, and that's to not just do less harm but to do some good. Sabrina Malhi: [11-20] RSV, covid and flu push hospitals to the brink -- and it may get worse. Branko Marcetic: [11-18] The Left Has a Lot to Celebrate After the Surprising Midterm Results: Unfortunately, it doesn't take a lot to justify an article like this. Matt McManus: [11-19] Why Conservative Intellectuals Are Anti-Intellectual: "The heart of the problem for conservatives is this: they fear too much intellectualism will lead people to question authority and hierarchy." Probably shouldn't waste too much time on this subject, but I hadn't noted before one quote, where J.S. Mill called conservatives the "stupid party." Ian Millhiser: [11-19] The Federalist Society controls the federal judiciary, so why can't they stop whining? Nicole Narea: [11-17] The GOP captures the House -- and is ready for revenge. Current numbers (Friday evening) are 218 R to 212 D, with 5 seats undecided (AK, 3 in CA, and 1 in CO, with R's currently leading in 3). But of course they're out for revenge. The only thing that motivates Republicans is quest for power, and the thing they like best about being in power is flouting it, especially to punish their enemies. So yeah, expect a non-stop shit-show from House Republicans. That should provide Democrats with plenty of talking points about how Republicans can't be trusted with any power in government. For more on Republicans, especially in the House:
David Price: [11-18] The Great COIN Con: Anthropologists' Lessons Learned After Two Decades of America's Failed Counterinsurgency Operations in Afghanistan. Clay Risen: [11-18] Staughton Lynd, Historian and Activist Turned Labor Lawyer, Dies at 92. Born 1929, his parents were famous sociologists, and he took their politics further left. He wrote a short book in 1968 called Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism, which I read and loved enough I wrote a letter objecting to Eugene Genovese's savage pan of the book. Genovese replied and suggested I read some of his work. I did, which steered me toward Marxism. Eventually, I conceded Genovese's points, but always remained sympathetic to Lynd -- which he rewarded with a long lifetime of political activism, eventually leaving academia for a second career as a labor organizer and lawyer. Jeffrey St Clair: [11-18] Roaming Charges: The Upside-Down World. As usual, lots of stuff here. One thing I learned about was "Natrium nuclear reactors." I had never heard of "natrium" before, but it turns out it's just a registered brand name for a particular company products, more generically known as sodium-cooled fast reactors (which I had heard of -- they go some way toward solving the worst risks of conventional reactors, but I'm not sure they go far enough). One item here worth quoting at length: a list of things that have already happened in the Ukraine War that weren't anticipated by either side:
Monday, November 14, 2022Music WeekExpanded blog post, November archive (in progress). Tweet: Music Week: 63 albums, 6 A-list, Music: Current count 39065 [39002] rated (+63), 46 [43] unrated (+3: 18 new, 28 old). I've made a small bit of progress toward organizing the Jazz Critics Poll, but not nearly enough. I was pleased to receive unsolicited mail from one of the voters today, reminding me that people are interested in this happening. I've thus far failed to line up a sponsor, but I want to make my website the focal point, so not lining up sponsorship won't stop it from happening. I would appreciate any suggestions on how to make the presentation more appealing, and/or how to better get the word out when we announce the results. I'm still planning on sending the voter invites out this week. Basic minimal qualifications for voting are that you need to have heard several hundred new jazz releases this year, and to have written about several dozen of them (broadcast journalists also count -- we have a number of them, although that's not a world I'm very familiar with; thus far I've heard 681 jazz releases, out of 1113 in my tracking file). Here's a list of voters from 2021. If you know someone else who should be voting, let me know. This week's records started with a long trawl through the late Loretta Lynn's back catalogue. I had looked for her albums a while back and found very little, so it's likely that their addition to streaming services is recent and ongoing (availability starts to get patchy after 1977, and I'm still missing one duet album with Ernest Tubb and several with Conway Twitty -- who, like many country stars of the period, I know almost exclusively from compilations). A couple of minor notes here: I complained last week about Jerry Lee Lewis albums failing to hit 30 minutes, but threw in the towel here: none of Lynn's 1960s and 1970s albums do (they mostly run 11 tracks). I only did the first (of three, I think) Greatest Hits LPs, partly because I used to own the LP, and partly because she was only beginning to find her unique voice when it came out, so it shows a different side of her compared to the later compilations. One thing I found interesting was that during breaks from this immersion in her work, I found myself recalling other country songs, mostly from George Jones and Merle Haggard. Must be some common bits of melody wafting through all three. The Mingus record was due to a user question. He asked whether my having skipped the record meant some sort of disapproval. You can rest assured that omissions simply reflect ignorance. Had I been aware of the album (at least during the last 20 years) I would have listed it. Now I am aware, and have listed it. The new stuff came late in the week, mostly promos that weren't due for release until early November, plus a couple of the August NoBusiness releases I just got this week. I've aded things to my jazz and non-jazz files, but haven't gotten around to rethinking the order (what's currently there is likely to change, possibly a lot). I see that AOTY is reporting the first 2022 Music Year End Lists (Decibel, Uncut). I haven't tracked them yet, but will soon begin to (the current Aggregate File has 80+ ratings (*) and mid-year lists (+), so is somewhat biased toward early-year releases, but the ranking there is: Wet Leg, Big Thief, Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd, Rosalia, Beyoncé, Mitski, Black Country New Road, The Smile, Nilufer Yanya. I weigh the EOY lists more heavily (5 points for top picks, 4 for 2-5, 3 for 6-10, 2 for 11-20, 1 for all other mentions), so the current numbers will soon get swamped. I just realized that one of the reasons I've been avoiding playing downloads (e.g., the new Thumbscrew album) is that the Klipsch speakers on the machine I collect them on are flaky, with one side turned down to squelch noise. I've just ordered a new pair of (slightly cheaper) Creative Labs speakers, so hopefully that will fix the problem. I had to replace the mouse last week, and I'm delighted with the new one, not least for eliminating the wire. New records reviewed this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
Old music:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Sunday, November 13, 2022Speaking of WhichThe following section was started on Wednesday, mostly finished by Thursday, although I've added occasional bits. This intro was written Sunday afternoon. The Arizona and Nevada Senate races were finally called for the Democrats, giving them 50 seats, plus a chance to pick up one more in the Georgia runoff, As I understand it, the extra seat will save them from some procedural hassles, so would be a big plus. Plus one seat still means that Manchin and Sinema can veto legislation, and perhaps most importantly any change to the filibuster rule, but it will take both of them instead of either/or. Still may not matter much if the House goes to the Republicans, as seems likely. Democrats have bravely claimed their showing as some kind of win, at least a victory over expectations, which seem to have been set by a combination of Republican arrogance and Democratic self-doubt. I haven't dug into the results nearly as much as in previous years, so have very little to say about specific races. Some of the articles below are helpful (especially the interviews), but none are anywhere near definitive. Still, I'm not very happy with this election. I've felt all along that Democrats should be able to do better. I'm particularly saddened at not picking up the Senate seat in Wisconsin -- I seriously doubt anyone has ever won three Senate terms by slimmer margins than Ron Johnson (although Russ Feingold was close on track with his first two wins, before Johnson beat him). Also in Ohio, which is a state I've always felt Democrats should be winning, and Iowa and Missouri, which should be more competitive. (North Carolina was actually a bit closer, but always seems to fall short, as do the big hopes centrist Democrats hold for Florida and Texas.) In Kansas, Democratic governor Laura Kelly won a very close race against one of the most loathsome Republicans I've encountered in a long time, but didn't have enough coattails to carry an Attorney General race where Republicans nominated the wretched Kris Kobach, let alone her former Lt. Governor Lynn Rogers, who ran for Treasurer. The State Supreme Court justices Republicans were keen to purge for ruling that abortion is a constitutional right were easily retained, and the House gerrymander failed to get rid of Kansas' one Democratic Representative. I also think it's significant that Sen. Jerry Moran, who is a reliable Republican foot-soldier but far from the worst, only barely managed 60% of the vote, despite outspending Democrat Mark Holland by 6.6-to-1 (felt more like 30-to-1, which was about what happened six years ago, when Moran again was capped at 60%). Despite its bloody-red reputation, Kansas reliably has a close to 40% Democratic base no matter now little they campaign. Shouldn't we be able to build on that? Americans voted for a new Congress, many Governors, and lots of lower offices. I ventured last week and the week before that the relentless drumroll of media stories touting Republican polling gains, even in publications like Vox that supposedly lean left, amounted to gaslighting. As the actual votes got counted, the New York Times (as usual, one of the worst offenders) immediately spun by asking their pundits: How did Democrats escape a rout?. A better question is why did a party that had nothing to offer America except more corruption, a diminished economy, less equality, more injustice, more guns and violence, fewer rights and an increasingly tattered security, with such contempt for the people that they spent the last two years scheming ways to steal elections and sabotage popular efforts when they lost anyway: why did this Republican Party still managed to get anywhere close to half of the votes? I suspect that the real effect of the gaslighting was less, as I mentioned last week, to set up another round of election-stealing charges, than to simply legitimize a Party that deserves nothing less than total dismissal. I opened this file Wednesday afternoon because I wanted to start with this tweet from Rick Perlstein:
I only half approve of this tweet. The slam on the Republicans is succinct but fundamentally right. What's missing is not just extra charges, of which there are many, but appreciation of how effective Republicans are at campaigning with such obvious faults. Without considering how Republicans tap into deep-seated psychic traits, it's impossible to tell whether a tie is a sign of Democratic weakness or heroism. One can argue either case, but let's start by nothing that unlike the midterm fiascos of 1994 and 2010, Democrats held their own this year. This was certainly not because Republicans got lazy and/or missed tricks. Their relentless demonization of Biden drove approval polls toward 40% over a year ago, and their media manipulation far exceeded anything in my memory. They had tons of money, which helped them select emotional hot buttons, forcing Democrats to back-peddle and depend on reason. Yet still, voters resisted. Biden's argument that democracy was at stake may have seemed too abstract, but it became much more palpable when the Republican-packed Supreme Court stripped Americans of their constitutional right to reproductive choice. Granted, Democrats should have done a better job of illuminating the much broader threat that Republicans poised to our freedoms, to our well-being, to society as a whole. Or alternatively, they could have tried harder to get people to fear and loathe Republicans, as Republicans have done to liberals and ultimately all Democrats over the last 40-50 years. But that's an uphill battle, and isn't necessarily in their nature (or necessarily a good thing). The Democratic Party is diverse and divided, intent on representing and servicing everyone -- which puts it at a severe disadvantage when facing such a single-minded adversary. Scanning further down in the Perlstein thread, I see he writes more [other comments in brackets; mine are TH]:
A couple more comments from the thread:
I don't think we can stress too muchthe role of the mainstream media in conditioning (and legitimating) expectations for the election. One piece you should read is from Steve M.'s invaluable No More Mister Nice Blog: [11-09] Democrats hold off the red wave -- and The New York Times. The bulk of the piece is a day-by-day roll call of articles predicting doom for the Democrats. Nore was the Times alone in drinking Republican Kool-Aid: he includes similar pieces from The New Yorker, CNN, Bloomberg, Politico, Axios, and Washington Post. Millions of Americans depend on these outlets for relief from the non-stop propaganda spewed out by Fox and kin, so when the "reality-based" world gets snowed, it's hard for most people not to think they might have some kind of point. In this case they were wrong. M. also wrote an earlier [11-05] piece on one specific New Yorker writer: Benjamin Wallace-Wells is a well-worked ref:
PS: Dean Baker has another example of how the New York Times spread misinformation in the runup to the election: [11/03] It's Five Days Before the Election and the NYT Has Another Bad News About the Economy Story that Contradicts Government Data. Another tweet on party mentality, from Josh Marshall:
Not a propos of the election, but another tweet caught my eye:
True enough, but it's not the same intolerance problem. Here are a few post-election links/comments that caught my eye: Isaac Chotiner: [11-11] Nate Cohn explains why this year's midterms broke the mold: Interview with "The [New York] Times' polling guru." Chotiner also wrote: [11-10] The accurate election polls that no one believed. Matthew Cooper: [11-11] Why Did Democrats Do So Well in the Midterms? I'd probably be more tempted to write a "Why did Democrats do so poorly" piece, since my default position is that Republicans are so bad, and that Democrats are objectively so much better, that if everyone gave the question serious thought the results would have been much more favorable. Still, this makes the case that some Democratic arguments -- especially on abortion and democracy -- resonated with enough voters to stay close even given the Republican snow job. James Fallows: [11-09] The Political Press Needs a Time Out: "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. How about if we waste less time trying." More examples of misleading analysis, especially from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Judd Legum has more: [11-10] Political media is broken. Benjamin Hart: [11-12] Donald Trump's Gift to Democrats. Interview with Amy Walter, of Cook Political Report. Trump has been in the news literally every day since he left office, which has made him much harder to forgive than, say, GW Bush, who became a hermit after 2008, and was totally forgotten by 2010 (even though his administration could be blamed for virtually everything had gone wrong in Obama's first two years). No doubt Trump motivated more Democrats to vote than would have without his constant irritation, but he also motivated his followers, and gave them renewed confidence even if based on lies. Hart's title isn't meant that way, but Republican elites who have no problem with Trump as long as he's winning will point to this disappointment as proof that he's not worth the drama, and should be dumped ASAP. Godspeed, sure, but Trump is still able to do one thing no other Republican can: suck all the oxygen out of a room, so it becomes impossible to rationally debate issues. Given the irrationality of Republican stances on virtually all issues, his removal may not work out as well as they think. Molly Hennessy-Fiske/Paul Kane: [11-12] Democrats surged to flip state legislatures, defying past GOP gains. Ellen Ioanes: [11-13] Democrats kept the Senate. But Georgia is still important. Robert Kuttner: [11-11] Did We Just Save Democracy? Maybe, sort of, aside from the fact that democracy wasn't in very good shape in the first place. Kuttner refers to a review of his book Going Big: FDR's Legacy, Biden's New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy: [11-07] Steps in the Left Direction. Eric Levitz: [11-10] David Shor's (Premature) Autopsy of the 2020 Midterm Elections. Midterms basically turn on which party comes out to vote, and which stays home. So the interesting point Shor makes here is: Republicans were up by about 2% relative to Democrats. Still, Democrats did better in battleground states, and seem to have gotten lazy in states they thought they had locked up (e.g., New York, California). Maurice Mitchell: [11-11] How the Democrats Won and Lost and 2022 Midterms. "Tuesday's results are a reprieve, but we still have mountains to move." Will Norris: [11-10] The Beginning of the End of the Subminimum Wage: "D.C. voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to force restaurants to pay employees the full minimum wage. The rest of the nation is likely to follow." Charles P Pierce: [11-10] No One Can Pretend that Wisconsin Is a Republic: Wisconsin has the most grotesque partisan gerrymandering of any state. It's so bad that when Democrats got 51 percent of the vote statewide, they only won 30 percent of the seats in the state legislature. Nathan J Robinson: [11-09] The Majority of Americans Do Not Support Right-Wing Extremism. Bill Scher: [11-09] America Does Care About Democracy and Abortion Rights. Some curious poll numbers here: 52 percent say the Republican Party is "too extreme," but 51% say the same about the Democratic Party (huh?); 56 percent believe Republicans want to pass a national abortion ban, but 53% believe Democrats want to put police funding (as recently as 2021, Democrats actually voted to increase police funding). Part of this can be blamed on Democrats having poor messaging skills, but there's some deep psychology here that Republicans have learned to exploit but which leaves Democrats awkwardly clueless. Jeffrey St Clair: [11-11] Roaming Charges: The Searh for Intelligent Life in American Politics: He's proudly outside of the two-party system ("I don't think a candidate I've actively supported has ever won elective office"), but that gives him some perspective: "The fact that Democrats are relieved at the narrowness of their loss and Republicans outraged by the thinness of their win speaks to the different psychologies of the two parties. One lives in fear, unsure (with reason) about its own beliefs. The other perpetually angry that not everyone bends to their will." This is followed by the illustration for "a blue surge is coming for Florida, sooner rather than later." On the other hand, he quotes Ted Cruz on why Democrats did better than expected: "Because for two years they have governed as liberals. They've governed as whacked out lefty nut jobs. You know what that did? That excited their base. That excited a bunch of young voters." Maybe they should do more of that? Many other subjects, as usual. E.g.: "I don't understand fleeing Twitter when you can watch one of the most grotesque people on the planet be shredded day after day in his very own safe space, in front of the people whose admiration he craves." Paul Street: [11-11] Twelve Takes on the Mid-Terms: I had doubts about linking here (he uses the "F-word" much more than necessary, as in "Republi-fascists," and nicknames Joe Biden "Burn Pit"), but couldn't deny you the dig at David ("statistically illiterate moron") Brooks. Tessa Stuart: [11-09] It Was a Huge Night for Abortion Rights -- Even in Kentucky. And here are few more items (mostly) beyond the election: Dean Baker: [11-11] The Crushing Health Care Cost Burden that Never Came: Dredges up the ominous 1990s warnings of billionaire Scrooge Peter Peterson to make a couple points. One is that the cost growth projected back then wasn't really in Social Security and Medicare but in a profit-hungry health care system, that Medicare was actually doing a better job of controlling than private heath insurance was. Another is that cost growth basically went flat after the Affordable Care Act kicked in around 2015 (aside from a blip up with the pandemic in 2020, and a slide down as the pandemic abated). None of this suggests that Medicare-for-All wouldn't fare even better than Obamacare, but it does show that we'd be in much worse shape had Democrats not passed the ACA. And had Trump managed to repeal ACA, today's gas prices would just be a rounding error (even if most of the extra costs were paid for in service quality). Jonathan Chait: [11-01] Progressive America Needs a Glasnost: "Stop being afraid to speak out against the madness." What he seems to mean is that Progressives should purge their ranks of hysterics and fringe eccentrics, but he starts with the example of the unnamed staff at the New York Times who persuaded the editorial board to not give air to an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton calling for martial law to crush Black Lives Matter protesters. The rejection didn't prevent Cotton from airing his noxious views, and may have given him a publicity boost. There's no really good solution to issues like this. Chait has a few more examples, which are mostly things the right rails against as "cancel culture" and "political correctness." I certainly see a need to handle those cases better, but they rarely bother me, at least where the people being chastised have little power of their own. And I still have a bad taste from 1992, when Bill Clinton went out of his way to attack a minor rapper dba Sister Souljah. Kate Conger/Mike Isaac/Ryan Mac/Tiffany Hsu: [11-11] Two Weeks of Chaos: Inside Elon Musk's Takeover of Twitter. I'm not sure why you should care, but if you're curious this is the basic story. Also:
Kelly Denton-Borhaug: [11-10] What an American Addiction to War Means to Veterans. Author has a book: And Then Your Soul Is Gone: Moral Injury and US War-Culture. Last week was Veterans Day, the only American holiday date (aside from Christmas, New Year's Day, and the 4th of July) considered so sacrosanct that it hasn't been gerrymandered into a long weekend. The date was originally fixed at the end of what was then called the Great War, making it a celebration of peace, but as the "war to end all war" in fact spawned more wars (David Fromkin wound up writing a book on the postwar settlement called The Peace to End All Peace), the holiday got taken over as a tribute to the martyrs, and eventually a celebration of American militarism. Every year, it's a holiday that makes me sick to my stomach. I remember back when I was drafted in 1969, the greatest fear I felt wasn't what the "enemy" might do to me -- my life wasn't worth much as the time, which is part of the reason they looked on me as ideal draft bait -- but what the Army would certainly do to me to try to turn me into a killer. (Not that I didn't know well enough what was going on in Vietnam. My next door neighbor was sent there and came back in small bits.) So when the author talks about "moral injury," I recognize something deeper than the better known PTSD that affects so many veterans. "War damages all who wage it" is fairly profound, but even there the net isn't cast wide enough. War damages the politicians who vote for it, the writers who cheer it on, and many bystanders, who matter how innocent they think they are. If I've learned one thing important in my 72 years, it's that. Connor Echols: [11-11] Diplomacy Watch: Could US-Russia nuke negotiations help set the stage for talks? Not a lot to report, but there is a report that Biden and Putin will be talking about extending the START treaty that limits some nuclear weapons. As Churchill once said, "jaw jaw is better than war war." Echols also wrote: [11-07] New White House reports suggest diplomacy isn't a four-letter word after all. Also on Ukraine:
John Hudson: [11-12] US intelligence report says key gulf ally meddled in American politics: "The United Arab Emirates steered US foreign policy in its favor through a series of legal and illegal exploits." Given that what happens in US politics has profound impacts on the rest of the world, I'm not surprised when foreign countries try to affect US elections -- especially given that the US has a long record of trying to influence foreign elections. So most of what this proves is that it's not just Russia (and Israel, which is much more aggressive, given their proxies -- speaking of which, see Michael Arria: [11-09] AIPAC spent over $4 million trying to stop Summer Lee but she's headed to Congress). Paul Krugman: [11-08] Is Divided Government Good? Don't Take Elon's Word for It. Refers to a Musk tweet, endorsing Republicans for Congress to lean against the Democrat in the White House. But the US has had divided government -- a President from one party and control of one or both Congressional bodies by the other -- with startling regularity (from memory so I may be off a bit: 2/8 years Truman, 6/8 Eisenhower, 0/8 Kennedy/Johnson, 8/8 Nixon/Ford, 0/4 Carter, 6/8 Reagan, 4/4 Bush I, 6/8 Clinton, 2/8 Bush II, 6/8 Obama, 2/4 Trump). In some cases that can lead to constructive compromises (although offhand, the examples that come to mind involve R Presidents working with D Congresses, and most of them are dated (like under Eisenhower and Nixon). But mostly it leads to obstruction and sabotage, which was most explicit after 2010, and would probably be even worse now (as of this writing, the Senate has 50 Democrats + a chance for one more in Georgia, but the House is leaning Republican, and that would be enough to torpedo any legislative efforts, and to hold even essential spending hostage). That might be OK if, like most contemporary Republicans, you believe problems (like pandemic and climate change) to be scams, and government to be intrinsically incompetent if not downright evil. On the other hand, if you think that we are facing real problems (even ones Republicans campaigned hard on, like inflation and crime) you should want a functioning political system, which these days means Democrats in charge. The only plus I see to divided government over the next two years is that it will make it easier to blame Republicans for inaction and obstruction in 2024. Still, it means two more years wasted so arrogant twits like Musk can get off easy. One last thing to note here is that the argument works best in the mid-terms, when the presidency is already fixed. You never find people arguing for divided government during a presidential election, because they always want to win both. So why credit it as an idea at all? Jill Lepore: [11-07] The case against the Twitter apology: "Our twenty-first century culture of performed remorse has become a sorry spectacle." Anatol Lieven: [11-09] Grim outlook on global warming emerges from UN conference: "Necessary carbon reduction targets will not be met; the US and China will have to work together to prevent further damage." Not much news (as least that I noticed) from the UN's COP27 climate conference in Egypt. Ian Millhiser: [11-11] The legal fight that could kill Biden's student debt relief plan, explained: "The program is almost certainly legal, but that fact is unlikely to persuade a judiciary dominated by his partisan foes." One of whom, a Trump judge in Texas, has already ruled against the program. Timothy Noah: [11-10] Inflation Is Dwindling (Just Like I Said It Was). He further suggests "there's even a growing possibility we can avoid a recession." But won't that require the Fed to stop its interest rate hikes when prices stabilize, instead of waiting until they get the unemployment rate they seem to be looking for? Jonathan Ofir: [11-11] Meet the new kingmakers of Israeli politics: "The racist, homophobic, ultra-nationalist Religious Zionism list was the big winner in Israel's most recent election. It is also a perfect reflection of where Israel is heading." This trajectory is hardly surprising, given that Israel has maintained domestic repression (an apartheid state) and militarism ever since 1948, with no interest in mitigating injustice or reconciling with worldwide norms. One can imagine the US, following 9/11, sinking ever deeper into the same mental rut -- indeed, that appears to have been the aspirations of the neocons who ran Bush's war machine and their apocalyptic allies in the fundamentalist churches -- but most Americans turned out to not have the stomach for perpetual war. Also:
Barnett R Rubin: [11-05] 14 months later: Five conclusions on Afghanistan withdrawal. During the Bush years, Rubin was one of the few experts on Afghanistan who could be counted on to offer sober analysis of the war there. Then, he went to work for Obama, and disappeared from pubic view. So good to hear from him again. The main conclusion is that US sanctions only serve to make a bad situation worse. The most interesting point is that China, Russia, and Iran haven't shown any desire to join with the Taliban in thumbimg noses at the US. I read this as suggesting an opportunity for a joint engagement, which could mitigate some of the Taliban's worst characteristics, and also reduce friction between the the US and its supposed nemeses. Alex Shephard: [11-11] The Attempt to Annoint Ron DeSantis as Trump's Heir Will Fail. I'm not so sure. Trump's command over the GOP Establishment was almost completely based on his reputation as a winner, established in the 2016 election and reinforced by virtually nothing since -- not that he hasn't tried to keep up appearances, rather remarkably keeping much of his base in line after wrongfooting such supposedly savvy Washington insiders as McConnell, Graham, and McCarthy. More on Trump:
Washington Post Editorial Board: [11-12] Here's how Congress can make the lame-duck session a mighty one: In recent years, when Democrats won governorships in North Carolina and Wisconsin, Republicans in those states (including the lame duck governors) moved quickly to pass laws to undermine established powers of their governors. That's seemed like bad taste, but but there are things that the old Democratic majorities can still do that would make the next two years more bearable. Most important is to get rid of the unnecessary law that requires Congress to vote on raising the federal debt limit -- something that Republicans have often used to try to extort concessions from Democratic administrations. They raise a few more issues. (I'm skeptical about "fight Russian aggression," especially given that money for arms for Ukraine has had overwhelming bipartisan support so far.) I doubt that much can (or should) be done, especially on measures that have floundered for two years (mostly due to the filibuster, which is especially unlikely to be changed in a lame duck session), but I'd be open to ideas. Related: Alex Thomas: [11-10] Democrats Have Two Months to Trump-Proof the Presidency: "With the party likely to cede the House -- if not the Senate -- to the GOP, meaningful steps to limit some of the executive branch's power must be taken during the lame-duck session." One problem here is that in a divided government, the only way to get many things done is through executive orders -- which you may not want to deny Biden just on the chance that Trump (or some equally malevolent Republican) might win in 2024. David Yaffe-Bellany: [11-11] Embattled Crypto Exchange FTX Files for Bankruptcy: "The speed of FTX's downfall has left crypto insiders stunned." At one point, FTX was "valued" at $32 billion. Also:
Bonus tweet from Zachary D Carter:
Monday, November 07, 2022Music WeekExpanded blog post, November archive (in progress). Tweet: Music Week: 58 albums, 5 A-list, Music: Current count 39002 [38944] rated (+58), 43 [47] unrated (-4: 15 new, 28 old). Rating count shot through the roof this week because I spent several days listening to the late Jerry Lee Lewis, and his Mercury albums rarely cracked 30 minutes, so they went fast. Nothing below impressed me as much as his best compilations and live albums, but I enjoyed almost every minute. There must be a solid A- Smash/Mercury best-of somewhere. (Christgau lists 1970's The Best of Jerry Lee Lewis at A- and 1985's Milestones at A, but those weren't available, and I didn't bother reconstructing them.) Last time I looked, there was very little back catalog available from Loretta Lynn, but that seems to have changed recently, so she may be next week's focus. [PS: The first records are remarkable. I expected the country music norm of lots of filler around a famous single or two, but her voice is extraordinary, and the covers show it off.] I spent a lot of time compiling my 2022 best jazz and best non-jazz files. I hadn't run any numbers before, so the big surprise was that I'm starting out with 73 non-jazz A-list new albums (which is a bit more than I usually wind up with) but only 49 jazz (which usually starts higher than non-jazz, but the numbers tend to even out as I scour EOY lists. On the other hand, B+(***) albums favor jazz 147 to 92, while lower grades are fairly even at 388 jazz, 376 non-jazz. In 2021, jazz divided at 77 A-list, 163 B+(***), and 455 lower; while non-jazz had 83 A-list, 122 B+(***), and 368 lower. As best I recall, I used to get into November with a 2-to-1 jazz advantage overall, with somewhat reduced but still positive ratios in the upper grade tiers. The only thing I did differently this year was to track the metacritic file from early in the year, so I suppose that made me more aware of new non-jazz (especially hip-hop and country) records. The change in jazz grades suggests that I've shifted the line between B+(***) and A- down. I don't know about that. I could test this by going back to a few dozen B+(***) albums to get a sense of how many I had cut short. Probably a few, but I'd be surprised if they made up the deficit. The thing that bothers me most about the lists is the ordering of the A-lists, especially for jazz. I have less sense of a top album, a top-five, a top-ten, etc., than ever before (e.g., I haven't played the Omri Ziegele album since I reviewed it, which is likely given that I streamed it, but I haven't played the top-rated CDs (Marta Sanchez, Andrew Cyrille, Rob Brown, Manel Fortiá) either, or anything else on the A-list. I'm sure that if I played them again, I'd like them again, but have absolutely no sense of how to order them. In such circumstances, what tends to happen is I add new records near the bottom of the list (this week's A- records are at 45 and 46), so early records wind up toward the top of the list. The non-jazz list is in slightly better shape, but I expect both will see a lot of reordering in the coming weeks. Plus additions, of course. I arbitrarily nudged the Selo I Ludi grade up not due to any relistening but because I wanted to include it in the latecomer section of the EOY lists. Just seemed like the sort of record that belongs there. I'm not through reviewing the year's Streamnotes archives for possible additions. It's a slow, unpleasant process. I should note that yesterday's Speaking of Which includes a long note on a piece by Brad Luen that Robert Christgau reprinted as a guest post last week. One more thing I want to stress is that it doesn't take a very high percentage of deaths (or other calamities) to produce a huge psychic toll. I'd say there is zero chance of all human beings being exterminated, and given that there is virtually zero chance of eradicating civilization (by which I mean our accumulated knowledge about the world). But there are a lot of bad things that can happen, and they reverberate through the living, often mutating into further bad things. One question I've been wondering about for at least 30 years is how close we are to the limits of Earth's carrying capacity. This isn't simply a question of population and resources, but varies considerably by organizational efficiency. The closer we are to the edge, the more fragile our world becomes. And if bad things create bad people -- which is suggested by the rise of neo-fascist parties around the world -- the risks of real systemic breakdown explode. These thoughts are the foundation for much of what I wrote yesterday. I'm aiming to send out Jazz Critics Poll ballot requests by November 15. I've done some website setup, and should start assembling a mail list later this week. Sponsorship is still unsettled, but I'm not going to worry about that. After I started writing this, I noticed that I still had unpacking to do. Next week for that. New records reviewed this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
Old music:
Grade (or other) changes:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Sunday, November 06, 2022Speaking of WhichI started this relatively early in the week, with the extended comment on the Brad Luen piece, followed by the Timothy Noah piece on economicism, which I had set aside. I wrote the intro Saturday afternoon. I decided some weeks ago that not just lust for power but the assumption that one deserves power and the other side must be denied power is central to the Republican understanding of the world. That makes Nixon (and not Reagan or Goldwater) the godfather of the modern Republican Party. I could add more detail on how and why, but the key elements are here. After the election, I need to decide whether to write this analysis up as a short book. A recent spate of books on the fundamental rot at the heart of the Party (see Heilbrun below) should cover that part adequately, but they tend to focus on the fringe and neglect the center. The rest of the book would be harder to get straight. Democrats face two problems: how to get more votes than Republicans, and how to deal with an increasing array of serious problems (many directly caused by Republicans), and others also caused by deep assumptions that both parties share. I have some ideas there, but they're rough and far from ready. Not a lot below on major foreign elections in Brazil and Israel (see St Clair for both, but I didn't comment much). I suppose I should point out that the rise of the racist and possibly genocidal Kahanist party in Israel is a problem for Democrats in the US, who have hitherto automatically supported whatever Israel does but will find a huge disconnect between their pro-democracy, pro-equality posture here and in Israel, while Republicans will have no trouble accepting the new government -- not least because many Republicans admire Israeli repression and militarism, and would like to implement the same here. Two days before the 2022 US elections, the so-called "mid-terms": a term I hate, because it suggests that only presidential elections really matter, and this is just a referendum on the last, a chance for disgruntled people to express their "buyer's remorse" without much consequence. But of course, there are consequences, the obvious one the chance to divide government to undermine any possibility of the party holding the presidency to get things done. Of course, that can be a good thing (as in 2006 or 2018) or a bad thing (1994 and 2010 were the worst), depending on which party is sabotaged. (Note though that 1994 and 2010 set up successful second term campaigns for Clinton and Obama, perhaps a source of hope if Republicans win in 2022, although the second terms of Clinton and Obama were mixed blessings, leading to defeats four years later.) I continue to believe that reports of a "Republican surge" -- the title of a David Brooks column I haven't read and won't link to -- are pure gaslighting, with the added ominous overtone of convincing the right that their losses are stolen, which will help justify whatever post-election schemes they've spent the last two years putting into place. When actual votes start getting counted Tuesday evening, we will start to be able to see through the media fog, and possibly get some measure of how effective (or not) the last two years of election denialism and vote rigging have been. Still, I don't expect the mainstream media to be quick to learn from its errors -- especially its inability to recognize phony campaign issues, or to properly spotlight the corruption of money in politics (least of all its own advertising windfall). I'm not wild about Biden's characterization of this election as a test and defense of democracy. It's not that I dispute the point, but democracy in America has been crippled since well before Leonard Cohen wrote his hopeful song about it. The test of a democracy is not merely whether people get a chance to vote and have their ballots counted, but whether doing so produces a government that responds to and takes action on behalf of most people. Back in the 19th century, it's easy to find and quote elites bemoaning the prospect that extending suffrage would let the "mob" take over government and using it for popular causes (like those promised in the Preamble to the US Constitution). But as suffrage became more universal, elites had to fall back on treachery to convince the masses not to claim their rights. Money is a tool, both to buy propaganda and to train candidates, who inevitably spend more time chasing it than they devote to their constituents' needs and hopes. And the media, with its elite ownership, advertising funding, and crass competition for the passing attention of viewers, is the ecosystem in which this deception takes place. It's often remarked that Republicans are better at playing the game of politics than Democrats. One theory is that Republicans simply care more about their policy goals than Democrats do -- if, indeed, Democrats, being hopelessly torn between their donors and their voters, actually have any (rather, their favorite trick is to try to work out compromises, like Obamacare, that ultimately satisfy neither camp). But Republicans are pretty careless about policy too: they mostly like wedge issues they can campaign on but don't have to do anything about once they're in power. A very good example is how much Reagan bashed Carter in 1980 over the plan to give the Panama Canal to Panama. After the election, he didn't lift a finger to rescind the transfer plan. Even when Bush I invaded Panama, no one suggested recovery of the Canal should be a war aim. Thomas Frank, in What's the Matter With Kansas?, went too far in chiding Republicans for never delivering on their promises to the religious right, but mostly because he riled up the suckers in the rank and file. The single most important thing to understand about Republicans is that they are addicted to power, and will do anything, at least within their identity as the party of True Americans, to seize and protect it. That identity goes all the way back to the Civil War, when they rose to save their vision of a Free West and wound up having to destroy the Slave Power. That left them with a very WASP power base, against which the Democrats were derided as the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion." While "rebellion" originally referred to secessionists, the list of the others Republicans hated grew to include populists, progressives, labor unions, socialists, and communists, all the way up to the post-WWII Red Scare. Coming out of the McCarthy hysteria, Nixon made a few tweaks to Republican Party identity: following Kevin Phillips's The Emerging Republican Majority, Nixon welcomed white southerners and white suburban ethnics into the G.O.P., making them True Americans, giving up on the dwindling support of Blacks for the one-time Party of Lincoln. Nixon is sometimes disparaged by conservative ideologues, who feel he never believed much in their principles (other than his own casual bigotry, which was almost universal among conservatives back then; even the rabid anti-communism he built his career on was something he was willing to compromise on). But he did obsessively believe in one thing: power, which was so important he was willing to do virtually anything to get and keep it. Republican contempt for democracy was all but inevitable given that they sought power by merging empowering the rich, boosting the military, and rallying (mostly religious) cultural reactionaries. Reagan was more successful at applying Nixon's strategy, partly because he avoided Nixon's deceitful smarminess, and partly because after McGovern, Carter gave up on unions as the backbone of the Democratic Party in favor of triangulating business interests -- a balancing act that proved difficult to pull off, although Clinton and Obama got some mileage out of it. But as demographics and repeated doses of dysfunctional policy started to erode their credibility, Republicans have been stuck in a pattern of doubling down, a bluff that has kept their vote share close enough to win (sometimes without even a plurality). Trump's innovation here is that even when he has an indefensible record, he's always on the attack, and that's kept kept together a party that should have been banished for gross incompetence as well as indecency. Rational people, like myself, wonder how long they can keep this farce up. We'll get some idea after Tuesday. Connor Echols: [11-04] Diplomacy Watch: Putin blinks, returns to Black Sea grain deal after just 4 days. I haven't put much effort into this regular section this week. The New York Times Updates headlines should give you a flavor:
The New York Times map page hasn't been updated since October 11, following Ukrainian ground gains in the two weeks before October 4, and widespread Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. The links I picked up are mostly on the lack of diplomacy:
Thomas Edsall: [11-02] 'Elites Are Making Choices That Are Not Good News': I was steered to this piece by Dean Baker, who agrees that "the basic point in the column is completely true," he adds that Edsall "hugely understates the extent to which the screwing of noncollege educated workers was the result of deliberate government policies." Sure, but why are we still litigating Clinton's stupid idea that the US can afford to lose blue collar jobs because cheaper trade will open up all those lucrative "symbolic manipulator" jobs his Labor Secretary Robert Reich touted? One can understand why workers who got shafted in that deal bear grudges against the Clintons, but who in their right mind thinks voting Republican is going to in any way fix their problem? Shirin Ghaffary: [11-04] How Elon Musk is changing Twitter: Before the sale, Twitter was a middling company with a massive network of users, which gave it a huge market valuation, as investors figured capturing that many eyes could eventually be exploited to make a lot of money. But the business model didn't demand much from users, so few people felt burdened by signing up and joining in. Musk's purchase may or may not have political and/or cultural implications, which may or may not be ominous, but immediately what it means is that henceforward Twitter has to make enough money to pay off its new owner and the debt he has saddled the company with. So Musk is starting to do the same things that private equity firms do when they swallow up companies: asset stripping and cost reductions. The net effect will make Twitter a much nastier place to work, and very likely a much less satisfactory place for users -- who, we should remember, contribute virtually all of the content that attracts viewers in the first place. The proposal for "making people pay for blue check marks" sounds like a tax at first, which is bad enough, but the fine print is considerably more alarming. The idea is that a premium program would "include other benefits like fewer ads and more visibility for your Twitter replies to other people's threads." The first part is relatively benign -- damn near everyone seems to be moving to a model of paying-to-avoid-ads -- but the latter is the first step toward a pay-to-play scheme. Eventually premium user's tweets will all be ads, because the model that pays the most -- although "ads" suggests that they're selling things; very often it will just be well-heeled people hiring megaphones to hector you. I expect they will eventually drive most users away, turning into a death spiral. Musk and his credits will lose a lot of money, and make an ugly mess in the process. More on Twitter:
Jonathan Guyer: [11-02] Netanyahu and the far right have triumphed. Here's what it means for Israel. Interview with Daniel Levy. I've followed Israel's slide to the far-right for 25+ years, but even still I'm shocked by how viciously racist Netanyahu's coalition partners are -- way beyond bigots in any other part of the world. More on Israel:
Benjamin Hart: [11-01] Of Course Trump Is All In on Paul Pelosi Conspiracy Theories. This sort of kneejerk deflection is one way to avoid a self-examination that might reveal that you're some kind of monster, or at least a major asshole. Jacob Heilbrunn: [10-30] How the Republican Fringe Became the Mainstream. Review of Robert Draper's new book, Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind, although it could easily be expanded to include Dana Milbank's The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party and David Corn's American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, or possibly others: now that the end-point is obvious, the debate is more about when the craziness started. I've been reading Corn, who looks back all the way back to McCarthy and the John Birch Society. One can even go further: Kim Phillips-Fein's Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan goes back to the DuPonts in the 1930s, and Heather Cox Richardson's To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party does a pretty good job of making Benjamin Harrison sound like a Bircher. But crazy is a dimension beyond promoting oligarchy with racism and demagoguery, something that runs deep in the Republican Party. The crazy really takes off with Obama's election in 2008, after which the chastised party pros fell behind the Fox-fanned Tea Party mania. John Amato and David Neiwert got it right in their short 2010 book: Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane. After the party pros nominated Mitt Romney and lost again to Obama, the rank-and-file was ready for someone as crude and vicious as Trump. And after Trump eked out a win against Hillary Clinton, well, you don't need a book to explain how crazed the Republicans became. It's gratifying that so many people have figured that much out. But the problem with focusing on how irrational Trump and his fans have become is that doing so often misses how bad Republican policy has become, and how little reporting gets done on how those policies harm the vast majority of Americans, and much of the world. Reagan and the Bushes were frontmen who were sent out to sugar-coat their administration's graft, while Romney and Ryan were forthright enough to come off as supervillains. With Trump, policy and performance are separated: he is a master at sucking up media attention, so no one bothers noticing what the goons in his administration actually do. With him, the transformation of the presidency to show business is complete, and that's mostly a bad thing, but hardly the worst. Similarly, his association with unsavory characters is bad, but nowhere near all of it. By the way:
Ellen Ioanes: [11-05] An atmosphere of violence: Stochastic terror in American politics: Interview with Kurt Braddock, "about how rhetorical strategies can lead to violence." Umair Irfan: [11-03] Your free pandemic health perks are on the way out: "The privatization of the Covid-19 response is well underway as federal funding runs out." I got a third Covid-19 booster shot last week. I had to go to Walgreens, and wait about 20 minutes until they squared away my insurance (which was Medicare + supplementals, good enough I almost never run into problems). I haven't been following this, but we're missing a big opportunity, not only to continue Covid-19 coverage but to start to build a universal foundation that can be incrementally extended toward universal health care. Most senior citizens are confused when people talk about Medicare-for-All, because they know that Medicare for them doesn't cover everything, and they have to get supplemental insurance to make up the gaps. So they think they still have private insurance, but have trouble understanding that it's so affordable because Medicare itself does all the heavy lifting. (Of course, like all private insurance, it gets ratcheted up every year, and unlike most they get to factor your age into the price, so "affordable" is a pretty relative term.) On the other hand, let's imagine a system where some things get covered automatically for everyone. That list could have started with the Covid-19 precautions and treatments, and be expanded going forward. Everything moved from individual/group policies to universal helps lower the cost of the policies, and can help manage overall costs, while getting us closer to the universal coverage we want and deserve. Paul Krugman:
Brad Luen: [10-23] The Semipop Review of Catastrophic and Existential Risks: Starts by defining catastrophic risks ("things that could kill off a decent percentage of the world") and existential risks ("things that could result in the collapse of civilization"), then reviews a handful of books, opening with Will MacAskill's What We Owe the Future, then focusing on four such risks: AI (Martin Ford: Rule of the Robots, Nick Bostrom: Superintelligence), Climate Change (David Wallace-Wells: The Uninhabitable Earth), Bio-Risks (Michael T Osterholm/Mark Olshaker: Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs), and War (Bear F Braumoeller: Only the Dead, Bruce G Blair: The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War, Fiona Hill/Clifford G Gaddy: Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin), before concluding with "The Intersection" -- the domino metaphor strikes me as more apt here, as various risks increase the likelihood of war, which in turn accelerates other risks. Luen is a professor of statistics and describes himself as "an unprincipled philosophical centrist." The only one of these books I've read is the Wallace-Wells, which among the half-dozen similar tomes I've read (going back to McKibben's The End of Nature, which I read in the mid-1990s during a July trip to a very steamy Florida, which illustrated his points better than his prose did) is as good a place to start as any. I've read very little about AI: I had a serious interest in it back in the 1980s, about the time neural nets and fuzzy math were invented, but lost track after that, and these days most "practical applications" I see are better described as Artificial Stupidity. I wouldn't say that AI is "value-neutral," but like most things its usefulness or not is fundamentally a political question. But the rest of the risk, as well as items Luen didn't include (most obviously various resource limits, including water and air as well as minerals and productive land). Were I do redo this exercise, I would start with politics, and try to show that bad politics both increases risk and degrades one's ability to cope with disaster. (Bad politicians like to hide increasing risk by shifting it to individuals: see The Great Risk Shift, by Jacob S Hacker. Also by pretending it isn't real: see The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis.)
The thing I find most disturbing about the pandemic wasn't how vulnerable we were -- beyond the legitimate fear of a new disease, the economy collapsed as much from supply chain fragility as from politically-ordered lockdowns -- but how a sizable political bloc has grown determined to prevent governments from responding to any future pandemic (which we should now understand to be a certainty). It's easy enough to think of technical solutions to most problems -- not that it's technically easy to switch from a carbon-fueled train to a solar-driven train without slowing the former down (the two great bugbears of the climate change debate are the ideas that the crisis is in the future, and that the only acceptable solution is one that imposes no costs or changes to our way of life). But we lack the political will to make changes based on rational analysis, and even when the lessons are hard-earned, lots of people refuse to learn them. My touchstone here was Jane Jacobs' 2004 Dark Age Ahead, which foresaw increasing cognitive inability to deal with the problems inevitably produced by technological complexity. (Richard Florida reviews Jacobs' book from the perspective of 2016, late enough to claim she prophesied Trump, here: Even Late in Her Career, Jane Jacobs Made Predictions That Are Coming True Today.) I've read more books along these lines, and none of them make me very optimistic for this century -- not that I don't doubt that humanity and some measure of civilization will survive into the next century. I should probably read the Braumoeller book, although at the moment I suspect some methodological problems. It's certainly one possible critique of Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature, but as I understand it -- I recall buying a copy but never got around to reading it -- the argument isn't just about the frequency of wars but also about the reasoning behind them. Up through WWII, most wars aimed at plunder, but that's become a much less popular rationale since, especially as the cost/benefit calculation has flipped, and the threat of nuclear annihilation looms. But I wouldn't be surprised if the frequency of war remains fairly steady: after all, I write about wars (and "lesser" but still violent conflicts) virtually every week. By the way, I just bought a copy of Brian T Watson: Headed Into the Abyss: The Story of Our Time and the Future We'll Face, which greatly expands on the subject of Luen's review. It's notable that the first chapter is "Capitalism," which even more than politics is the rarely-examined (except by Marxists, who obsess over it) prime mover driving us into the future. I should also note that my latest Book Roundup has a long list of recent books on post-capitalism (aka "degrowth" or "post growth") thinking. Scant chance that any signifiant number of American politicians are going to even start talking about this -- Democrats have long seen growth as the magic elixir that allows them to be pro-business as well as helping everyone else; on the other hand, Republican economic scams often seem to be anti-growth, without giving us any degrowth benefits. Much more on war and the diminishing competency of politics there. Ian Millhiser: [11-03] The nightmarish Supreme Court case that could gut Medicaid, explained: "Health and Hospital Corporation v. Talevski is the single greatest threat to America's social safety net since Paul Ryan." Steven Lee Myers: [11-06] Russia Reactivates Its Trolls and Bots Ahead of Tuesday's Midterms: "Researchers have identified a series of Russian information operations to influence American elections and, perhaps, erode support for Ukraine." I wouldn't read much into this, but of course, that's what they do. I doubt it will have any effect, unless Democrats use it as some kind of excuse for losing (as Clinton's coterie did after 2016). More interesting is whether they can nudge Republicans into an anti-Ukraine stand, which is something they're tempted by. Also, note: [11-04] Twitter layoffs gutted election information teams days before midterms. Timothy Noah: [10-25] May God Save Us From Economists: Economics "can be a useful tool for policymaking, but it's become the only tool. It's time for economics to back the hell off." As Noah points out: economists overvalue modeling; economists undervalue data; economists don't get societies; economists don't get irrationality; economists don't get people who aren't economists. Noah then looks at three domains: criminal justice; health care; and climate change. Central to this is the notion that every problem can be decided by a cost/benefit analysis (provided you can assume a value for human lives, which is kind of a problem; as with many math problems, the devil's not so much in the details as in the assumptions). Elizabeth Popp Berman's Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in US Public Policy is one of the books cited. Jeffrey St Clair: [11-04] Roaming Charges: History Ain't Changed: Starts with elections in Brazil and Israel. Elections: No horse races, and no post-mortems, but a few quick links on the election:
Mike Davis: More pieces on the late leftist scholar Mike Davis:
A couple closing tweets. The first is from Bill Kristol, who 20 years ago I would have put near the top of a list of top-ten public enemies:
So I don't regard his opinion as anything more than a random blip, but there it is. The second one is from someone named Benedict Evans:
I started using Linux around 1998, and I never regretted it, so this makes me more (not less) inclined to switch. Still, while the two comparisons aren't analogous. It doesn't make much difference to me whether you are also running Linux, or are saddled with Windows or MacOS (or whatever they call it these days). On the other hand, with Twitter-like software it does matter whether the people I want to follow are on the same service I'm on. For social media, network effects are the basis of effective monopolies, which is what Twitter, Facebook, etc., are. Mastodon doesn't come remotely close, and for various technical reasons -- it's designed to prevent monopolization -- it likely never will be. On the other hand, I could see setting up a server and migrating a fairly close-knit group (like, say, the Expert Witness group currently at Facebook) -- which would probably work better than it does on Facebook. But I haven't looked into it enough to make any decisions.
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