July 18, 2021

Magic Itself Is No Magic Bullet: Technology and Social Conflict

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08935696.2021.1893083?scroll=top&needAccess=true

Zoe Sherman

New technologies can feel magical. “Any sufficiently advanced technology,” Arthur C. Clarke said, “is indistinguishable from magic.” In response, Oscar Marín Miró (2018) playfully maps selected technologies from the industrial and information ages into magical categories: regression analysis appears as an instance of divination, video streaming as an instance of clairvoyance. When playing with a new technological tool, we exclaim, “It works like magic!” We mean that the mechanisms are at least a bit obscure to us (sometimes entirely obscure) and the effort is less than expected for the result achieved.1 Expectations, meanwhile, adjust with familiarity. Even though stories of magic often explain magic as rooted in ancient knowledge, real-world technologies retain their magical aura only as long as they feel new. Indeed, when technologies become familiar, we stop even thinking of them as technologies, let alone as magical; pencils and paper, gas stoves, and flush toilets are all technologies. For the world’s wealthier strata, experiences of sitting in an upholstered chair cruising horizontally at 500 miles per hour while suspended several vertical miles above the surface of the earth or of seeing a dozen different friends or collaborators spread across thousands of miles of real geography as moving images in a rectilinear array across an illuminated screen and hearing their voices reacting to one another with only brief time lags have come to seem unremarkable, even tiresome, not magical at all! By the time the fourth Harry Potter book was published in 2000, some of what seemed magical in the first three had become commonplace in the real world, and J. K. Rowling had to explain why, for example, witches and wizards were crouching in front of the fireplace and sticking their heads into the flame with a dash of floo powder to talk to someone far away rather than, you know, making use of a cell phone as most anyone else in Great Britain would have done (Rowling 2000, 548)2

At the extreme, we apply the term “magic” to indicate minimal one-off effort and total permanent success: a magic bullet. Admittedly, magic bullets are more often remarked on in their absence than their presence. “Magical thinking” is often used as a pejorative term for delusional optimism. But magic is, after all, seductive. Magical thinking attracts. We wish—What do fairies and imps and genies do with their magic powers in our tales? Grant wishes!—for our problems to be magically solved. Techno-optimists and -enthusiasts and -opportunists and -swindlers promise to do just that. Some of us succumb to the temptation to leave it to technological miracles to save us from danger. Some as-yet-unimagined technological solution will arrive in time to save us from the hard, incremental work of reducing carbon emissions, allowing us to keep our daily habits and our climate both simultaneously unchanged. Medical breakthroughs will continue to defeat or at least delay more and more causes of death and spare us the disappointment of departing too soon and maybe eventually from the necessity of dying at all. A dominant narrative of Western science is of advancing knowledge and, with it, of increasing power to bend the environment and the unruly elements of ourselves to suit our consciously articulated goals. This confidence is absorbed into economics with a narrative of advancing knowledge and increasing power generating economic prosperity (for two examples of many, see Stiglitz 2019; Romer 2006).

Even a cursory reading of the literature of magic provides us with counternarratives of doubt, however. The ensemble in Into the Woods sings, “Wishes come true, not free” (Sondheim and Lapine [1986] 2020). The Blue Fairy can do a lot for Geppetto the puppet maker and Pinocchio the puppet, but—as retold in the movie Geppetto—she moderates unreasonable expectations with the warning, “Just because it’s magic doesn’t mean it’s easy” (Walt Disney Studios [2000] 2009). In the oral, literary, theatre, and film traditions that live most intimately with magic, magic itself is no magic bullet. One sort of problem arises when magic is not available to all through equal and open access. “In muggle3 fairy tales,” J. K. Rowling (2008, vii–viii) explains in the introduction to The Tales of Beedle the Bard, “magic tends to lie at the root of the hero’s or heroine’s troubles—the wicked witch has poisoned the apple, or put the princess into a hundred-year’s sleep, or turned the prince into a hideous beast.” Not having magic when others do is clearly a severe disadvantage. Those who have magic are liable to press their advantage. Magic wielders can be of a nitpicky, legalistic bent, as when the imp takes the woodcutter’s idiomatic use of the phrase “I wish” as a formal request and uses up what could be a powerful deployment of magic on the rather mundane matter of serving sausages for supper (Zemach 1986). Those with magic must be treated with caution lest they take offense and use it against you. Exchanges with those who control magic are rarely equal exchanges; with their monopoly, they can charge a very high price for their services. The Little Mermaid learned this painfully.4 Even the magic that appears at first to be bestowed as a gift may in fact entrap the recipient in tangled obligations. Magic stolen by a subordinate rather than bestowed escapes the control of the misappropriator and becomes a punishment, as in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,”5 or in Anthony’s misadventure with Strega Nona’s magic pot (dePaola [1975] 2015).

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July 18, 2021

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) says attempts to eliminate fossil fuels will make climate change "worse"

while condemning a key provision of the Democratic infrastructure bill.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/joe-manchin-condemns-anti-fossil-fuel-provisions-in-infrastructure-bill/ar-AAMdq0r

Manchin told CNN that he was "concerned" about language targeting fossil fuels shortly after attending a meeting discussing the plan with fellow Democrats on Wednesday. The moderate Democrat from coal-producing West Virginia, who has frequently been accused of obstructionism by progressives in his party, took issue with "the climate portion" of the $3.5 billion proposal.

"If they're eliminating fossils, and I'm finding out there's a lot of language in places they're eliminating fossils, which is very, very disturbing, because if you're sticking your head in the sand, and saying that fossil [fuel] has to be eliminated in America, and they want to get rid of it, and thinking that's going to clean up the global climate, it won't clean it up all," Manchin said. "If anything, it would be worse."

Democrats are hoping to push the bill through Congress and onto the desk of President Joe Biden using the Senate's budget reconciliation process. The strategy would allow them to pass the proposal without any support from Republicans. However, Manchin's approval of any such plan would be crucial since Democratic votes would have to be unanimous. The upper chamber is evenly split, with Vice President Kamala Harris holding the power to break tied votes.

Despite Manchin's remarks, an overwhelming majority of scientists agree that eliminating fossil fuels could help to mitigate, not increase, the potentially devastating effects of climate change. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, causing temperatures to rise by trapping heat in the atmosphere. Manchin made similar comments to The Washington Post after Wednesday's meeting, while clarifying that he believes that working to eliminate fossil fuels could worsen climate change because "there won't be another country who will step to the plate to do the research and development that will fix the emissions that are coming from fossil right now."

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Manchin to Speak At Fundraiser Hosted by Oil Industry Leaders After Defending Fossil Fuels

https://headtopics.com/us/manchin-to-speak-at-fundraiser-hosted-by-oil-industry-leaders-after-defending-fossil-fuels-20967817

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-manchin-texas-republican-fundraiser_n_60f1cbbae4b00ef8761c23d0

July 18, 2021

Spike Lee Accidentally Reveals Palme d'Or Winner Early: It's 'Titane'

Julia Ducournau becomes the second woman to win the top prize, after Jane Campion in 1993. The surprise reveal came at the start of a chaotic ceremony.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/movies/cannes-winners-titane-julia-ducournau.html



CANNES, France — The 2021 edition of the Cannes Film Festival gave its top prize, the prestigious Palme d’Or, to the French film “Titane.” A wild serial-killer story with some of the most controversial scenes of the festival, “Titane” was directed by Julia Ducournau, who became just the second woman to win the Palme, after Jane Campion took the prize in 1993 for “The Piano.” And though “Titane” had been hotly tipped as a prime contender for the Palme, that reveal came much earlier than intended: At the beginning of the closing ceremony, when the jury president, Spike Lee, was asked to announce the first prize of the night, he misunderstood and read off the first-prize winner instead. “Don’t do it!” shouted the actress-director Mélanie Laurent, a jury member seated next to Lee. But the cat was already out of the bag.

https://twitter.com/kylebuchanan/status/1416464024749973505
(At a news conference after the ceremony, Lee said that he had no excuses and that “I messed up,” adding, “I’m a big sports fan. It’s like the guy at the end of the game in the foul line, he misses the free throw or a guy misses a kick.” He also said he apologized to the Cannes organizers. “They said forget about it.”) The accidental “Titane” reveal was only the first of several chaotic moments at the ceremony, as the spoiled Palme reveal was followed by a best-actor prize for Caleb Landry Jones for the Australian tragedy “Nitram.” When a nervous-looking Jones took the stage, he appeared sick to his stomach, said, “I cannot do this,” and beat a hasty retreat. Still, by the time a teary Ducournau was brought out at the end of the ceremony to finally accept her Palme, she had embraced the chaos. “This evening has been perfect,” she said, “because it’s so not perfect.”



Other major winners included Leos Carax, who took the best-director prize for his eccentric musical “Annette,” best-actress winner Renate Reinsve for the Norwegian romantic dramedy “The Worst Person in the World,” and a pair of ties: The second-place prize was split between “A Hero,” from the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, and the Finnish drama “Compartment No. 6,” while the third-prize tie went to the Nadav Lapid film “Ahed’s Knee” and “Memoria,” starring Tilda Swinton.

At the last Cannes film festival, held in 2019, the Palme winner was “Parasite,” the first major prize Bong Joon Ho’s film took on its path to the best-picture Oscar. Though “Titane” is far too gory to become a major Oscar contender, its Palme win firmly establishes Ducournau as a major international director only two feature films into her career.

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TITANE Trailer (2021)

July 17, 2021

Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Fire (1979)

Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Fire (1979) French TV with Serge Gainsbourg



Label:
Philips – 9101 228, ZE Records – 9101 228
Format:
Vinyl, LP
Country:
France
Released:
1979
Genre:
Electronic, Rock
Style:
Leftfield, Experimental, Disco











Lizzy Mercier Descloux: Behind the Muse

Though she may be best known as a footnote to the careers of icons like Patti Smith and Chet Baker, the late French singer Lizzy Mercier Descloux was a visionary in her own right who encapsulated limitless post-punk ideals. In light of a new reissue series, Laura Snapes chronicles her pioneering solo work.

https://pitchfork.com/features/from-the-pitchfork-review/9828-lizzy-mercier-descloux-behind-the-muse/

July 17, 2021

Matt Taibbi's Puff Piece On Tucker Carlson Is Proof He Can't Do Journalism Any More

After defending Tucker Carlson, we must now accept that the once great reporter is now a shitty one who peddles in conspiracy theories for clicks.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/matt-taibbis-puff-piece-on-tucker



Like many other political journalists, I have watched in horror at Matt Taibbi’s bizarre decision to throw his considerable reputation down the toilet and join the outer regions of far left/right conspiracy land. Taibbi’s transformation in recent years into a mouth piece for right wing propaganda has now resulted in him going to bat for America’s most prominent White Supremacist propagandist, Tucker Carlson. In what can only be described as a puff piece, Taibbi interviewed the Fox News host and trotted out a mixture of easily disprovable propaganda to defend him against accusations that he made up a story about the NSA spying on him. In his newsletter, Taibbi paints Carlson as a victim of liberal hysteria and goes to great lengths to convince his readers that he is in fact a brave truth teller railing against the establishment. Even the title of his piece, ‘Spying and Smearing is "Un-American," not Tucker Carlson’ is ridiculous and a testament to how far Taibbi has fallen.

Five years ago, no one could have ever predicted that Taibbi would be defending a racist conspiracy theorist who makes a living on the most repellent, corrosive network in history. Carlson, it must be remembered, has claimed immigrants make America “dirtier”, promoted white replacement theory, and insinuated that the FBI instigated the attempted coup on January 6th. And those are some of the more benign theories he has floated on his nightly show. Taibbi is so impressed with Carlson that he even dedicates a significant amount of time to showcasing his debate prowess and ability to own neocons. “Carlson’s gleeful arson of GOP shibboleths in 2017-2018 was inspired television,” he writes. Defending Tucker Carlson is one thing, fawning over him is another thing entirely. Anyone who has followed Taibbi recently knew this day was coming. His ideological compadre Glenn Greenwald has been doing the rounds on Fox News’s best and whitest for several years now, and it was only a matter of time before Taibbi joined him. It is a sad day though that should mark the end of Taibbi’s reputation as a respected journalist.

Peddler of conspiracy theories

On his show late last month, Tucker Carlson claimed that he had spoken to an anonymous whistle blower who told him that the NSA was “monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.” His show ran the banner: "NSA LEAKED TUCKER'S EMAILS TO JOURNALISTS." To be clear, there is a chance that the NSA did intercept Carlson’s attempts to secure an interview with Vladimir Putin because they do monitor foreign enemies, but there is no evidence the NSA targeted Carlson specifically, knew who he was, or want to take his show off the air. The organization has refuted Carlson’s claims categorically and stated that:



Carlson good, liberals bad

Given Carlson presented his extraordinary claims with no accompanying evidence, they can also be dismissed without evidence. According to Taibbi though, the “odds favor the NSA scandal being true,” because there have been other alleged examples of the NSA engaging in illegal activity in collaboration with the White House and the press. Taibbi conveniently doesn’t present any actual evidence in Carlson’s case either, preferring instead to take the Fox News host’s word for it, even suggesting he could be “whisked away and testicle-whipped in a Langley garage,” or, as Carlson told him, arrested suddenly for “having a meth lab in my basement””. Oddly, Fox News has said nothing about Carlson’s shocking claims and has refused to engage in any reporting on the issue, much to Carlson’s apparent anger. Carlson is, as Vox’s Aaron Rupar notes, “a serial fabulist” with a long history of lying to his audience, so when you weigh up the evidence it is safe to say the story is almost certainly utter nonsense. Citing a truly devastating piece in the Washington Post that lays out in excruciating detail Carlson’s ruthless exploitation of white grievance politics, Taibbi claims the Fox News host is being subjected to “propaganda” that “goes unnecessary miles beyond reality.” Taibbi’s defense of Carlson is bizarre given the Post piece not only describes multiple examples of Carlson’s appalling demagoguery, but also exposes some of his egregious lies. Carlson, for example, made up a particularly cruel story about his former first-grade teacher that turned out to be completely untrue, and totally mischaracterized and lied about an exchange he had with civil rights leader Rev. Sampson for a piece he wrote in Esquire. Carlson doesn’t just bend the truth, he literally makes things up. Taibbi however, claims this is all noise to cover up the real enemy in America: liberals.

The adoption of right wing myths......

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July 17, 2021

COVID-19's Effects on Kids Are Even Stranger Than We Thought

COVID-19’s Effects on Kids Are Even Stranger Than We Thought

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/clues-about-mis-c-and-covid-19-kids/619447/



The U.S. fell short of its goal of giving at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to 70 percent of adults by July 4, but not by much. About two-thirds of everyone above the age of 18 had gotten a shot when the holiday arrived, with coverage among seniors surpassing even that benchmark. That leaves kids—mostly unvaccinated—as the Americans most exposed to the pandemic this summer, while the Delta variant spreads. It’s said that COVID-19 may soon be a disease of the young. If that’s what’s coming, then its effects on children must be better understood.

This month, The New England Journal of Medicine published new treatment guidelines for the occasionally fatal, COVID-related condition known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). When kids first started showing signs of MIS-C in early 2020—rash or conjunctivitis; low blood pressure; diarrhea or vomiting; etc.—doctors guessed it was an inflammatory disease that occurs most often in toddlers called Kawasaki disease. Now most experts believe it’s a separate condition, affecting kids at an average age of 8. No more than a few hundred children in the U.S. have died from COVID-19 during the pandemic—compared with more than half a million deaths overall—but more than 4,000 have developed MIS-C, and we still don’t have foolproof ways to cure it. But a handful of scientists think they’ve found important clues about what drives MIS-C. The disease, they say, may have something to do with a dangerous condition most commonly associated with tampon use.

That condition, called toxic shock syndrome, was also quite mysterious when it first appeared, in a group of kids in the late 1970s. Within a few years, it was clear that women who used high-absorbency tampons were also falling ill, with symptoms very much like those now seen in MIS-C: They had kidney failure, diarrhea, and skin rashes; a few went into shock and died. (Indeed, one of the early sufferers, like the early MIS-C patients, was initially and incorrectly thought to have Kawasaki disease.) Doctors soon realized that the tampon-induced sickness was caused by a buildup of toxins from certain strains of Staphylococcus or Streptococcus bacteria. In people who do not yet have immunity to those strains, the toxins somehow bypass the immune system’s usual processes for developing a targeted response to a pathogen. That sets off a widespread, confused, nonspecific immune reaction.

Read: Doctors are puzzled by heart inflammation in the young and vaccinated

The toxins that caused the immune system to run amok were called “superantigens” in 1989. (More than two dozen types have now been discovered in tampon-related bacteria, rabies, Ebola, and other pathogens.) What makes them “super” is their ability to short-circuit T-cell receptors. Under normal circumstances, a foreign substance provokes an immune reaction when a piece of it, called an antigen, binds to the nook in the middle of a T-cell receptor. That prompts the body to make antibodies tailored to the antigen’s specific shape. But superantigens manage to grab on and connect to the T cells outside the nook. That still triggers an immune response, but it isn’t one that’s custom-made for the infection. “What does a superantigen do? It comes on from the side,” says Moshe Arditi, a pediatric-infectious-disease doctor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in L.A. “That's why it’s able to bind to many, many, many, many cells—20 to 30 percent of your T cells that suddenly could be bound by the superantigen and—boom—activated like crazy.”

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