Baffled European

Category: USA

  • Did anything happen?

    I’ve managed to ignore this nonsense for a week and it’s been great. However, it’s so fascinating to watch this train crash, I must come back to it. What did I miss?

    There was a tragic flash flood in Texas which killed over 100 people, including a group of children on holiday. The agencies responsible for this sort of thing have been gutted by the government and have formed a circular firing squad, everybody blaming each other.

    Nothing going on in the trade war. 90 deals in 90 days was the idea. They have managed one, and it’s not very good. The deadline has extended to August for the time being.

    Grok has restyled itself as “Mechahitler” and is pushing conspiracy theories about how the Jews run the world. Linda Yaccarino resigned as Twitter CEO a day after Grok started posting rape fantasies about her. This AI thing is working out well.

    The army has occupied MacArthur Park because somebody left the cake out in the rain or something like that. Presumably to intimidate the local population.

    Releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files was a big promise. Bondi said she had the files on her desk a couple of months ago. She admitted her mistake last week and now says that in fact these files do not exist at all. Maga are furious about this and have noticed all sorts of other betrayals. Too late.

    All totally insane. I think I’m up to speed.

  • Heatwave

    It is too hot today. A peak of 37°C. It’s to be hoped this will be the hottest day of the year, but it won’t be. Another burning hot summer, drought, forest fires, failing harvest. This is happening too often and we all know why.

    Most of the world recognises the problem and is doing something about it. Rather too slowly, it must be said, but it is being addressed.

    The disheartening thing is that this is the new normal. If we stopped all CO₂ production right now, it would take decades for this extreme weather to subside. As it is, everything is going to get worse.

    Significantly worse, as the denial of reality becomes suppression of reality in the USA. They’ve already got rid of climate scientists and are currently shutting down information sources. This week, they also decided to stop sharing some of its weather data. No explanation, just a termination. The service is still running for military purposes.

    This is not a game-breaker, but it makes it more difficult to model and measure things like the sea ice extent at the poles, one of the bell-weathers of climate change. Hurricanes will be more difficult to predict as well, hope FEMA is prepared for that.

    This issue affects me, it affects all of us. But these bone-headed, ignorant, stubborn, irresponsible fools in the USA are doing their best to ruin the world for everybody. There’s nothing we can do.

  • A kick up the arts

    Until recently, the Kennedy Center was a venue for performing arts. Opera, classical music, jazz, folk, theatre, poetry, stuff like that. These things don’t have huge popular appeal, but they all have an audience. The Center attempts to present a snapshot of the wide spectrum of culture in the USA.

    At least they used to. The president fancies himself as a connoisseur of the arts, a man with a finely-tuned sense for cultural taste. In order to enforce this, he removed the leadership of the Center and replaced them with maga fanatics to make appropriate adjustments to the programme.

    The first major alteration was to add a faith group, in order to reflect the artistic input that religion offers. So far, only Christianity is being promoted. Maybe other religions will get some attention in the future. At any rate, the new leadership is asking staff to pray before business meetings.

    Their first production will be Les Misérables, their patron’s favourite musical. No problem with that, but the new ticketing system is causing a stir. It’s all being arranged in the style of an election fundraiser, allocating corporate hospitality with “donors” buying blocks of seats. Corrupt hucksterism is the watchword.

    Ticket sales and attendances have collapsed. All this has alienated the existing audience, without appealing to a new audience that exists largely in maga’s imagination. They are asking for a five-fold increase in federal subsidies to cover the shortfall.

    These people are useless at everything.

  • More trade wars

    Last week, the Court of International Trade in the USA ruled that the Liberty Day tariffs were illegal. The government immediately announced it would appeal to the Supreme Court, and is keeping the tariffs in place until the case is heard.

    Not just keeping them in place, but expanding them. Steel and aluminium is not included in the ruling. As such, the president impulsively decided to raise tariffs to 50%. Just like that.

    There was a big splash last month, as the USA announced a trade deal with the UK. Whether this is still valid, or whether the USA is already reneging on an agreement is not clear.

    What the Supreme Court will do is anybody’s guess. On the one hand, they allow the government to do virtually anything on procedural grounds. On the other, this policy is extremely damaging.

    They recently ruled that the president could sack basically anybody, but not the Chair of the Federal Reserve. There was no particularly good reason for this, but they know that sacking this person on a whim will cause economic armageddon. They know they are dealing with a bad man and will take the necessary steps to stop him from making too much of a mess.

    In this sense, the Supreme Court is doing an excellent job of protecting capital and property, while doing nothing to protect humans from the ravages of the villains in charge. I think this might be the root of the problem in the country.

  • Man’s crisis of identity in the earlier half of the 21st century

    Tim Burchett, a Republican representative from Tennessee, does not drink through a straw. Only women do that. I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t. Just put it in your mouth and suck a little, sweetie. Nobody is going to be marking you for technique and style.

    This revelation came in order to prove that he is definitely a macho manly man. Fox News reckons that real men don’t talk about how macho they are, they show it by not eating soup or crossing their legs. Obvious, really.

    This is not to mention the enthusiasm that all members of the administration have for cosplaying as soldiers. The impression they give is that of an alpha gorilla beating its chest to show its dominance, but the rest of the world just boggles at their aberrant behaviour.

    I guess the problem is that there is not much difference between men and women in reality. There’s no advantage either way for jobs like these. What they need to do is create artificial differences. Men are macho warriors, women are simpering bimbos. They constantly need to emphasise this, in order to prove that only men can perform these jobs.

    It’s not a new problem, nor is it confined to maga. They do make a big point of it however, and it would be better for everybody if they would just behave like normal people instead of oddballs and freaks. But then we wouldn’t have this problem.

  • The cost of paranoia

    Moody’s lowered the credit rating for the USA last week. They had concerns about the federal deficit. Those concerns have been justified with the new budget proposal, which will raise the deficit by almost $4trillion.

    The headline policies are predictable: a massive giveaway to the president’s friends and clients, to be partly funded by destroying Medicaid. Destroying education, science, research etc are all part of it as well. The Golden Dome makes its appearance with $25bn as a first payment in what is expected to cost $175bn in total. It’s a waste of money, but go ahead.

    What is astonishing is the amount of money they want to spend on racism. ICE will receive $50bn to build a network of concentration camps for up to 200,000 inmates as part of the mania against “illegal immigrants” and anybody else who gets in their way.

    There will be another $30bn to turn ICE into a massive secret police force. This is for hiring, transport and infrastructure, again purely for the perceived necessity to remove undesirables.

    Best of all is a provision that would prevent judicial oversight of what the government is up to. It removes any penalty for the government ignoring an injunction or a contempt charge. Nice.

    This was passed by Republicans. Their great leader told them it would be “ultimate treason” to reject it. It still needs to be passed by the Senate. It’ll be interesting to see how much they accept.

  • Ampelalphamännchen

    “Hi, this is Elon Musk. They say money can’t buy happiness, and I guess that’s true. God knows I’ve tried. But it can buy a Cybertruck, so that’s pretty sick, right? Fuck, I’m so alone.”

    This is the message played by a pedestrian crossing in California when you press the button to cross the road. Similar AI generated recordings of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have been added to crossings in other states.

    It’s quite easy to do. The magic boxes on the traffic lights run some software which is configured over a Bluetooth connection. If you have the app and the correct password, you’re in and you can reconfigure the crossing to do as you want. The default password is “1234”. Polara, the manufacturer, gives strong warnings about changing it before putting the device into public use. This seems like sensible advice, but obviously nobody does it.

    Polara has removed the app from Google Play Store, which will at least slow down any copycat hacks. Local authorities have reset the devices, presumably setting a proper password this time.

    “Hey, it’s Zuck here. I just want to tell you how very proud I am of everything we’ve been building together. From undermining democracy to cooking our grandparents’ brains with AI slop, to — to making the world less safe for trans people. Nobody does it better than us, and, uh, and I think that’s pretty neat. Zuck out!”

  • Whatever it takes

    It wasn’t the tyrannical behaviour. Not the repeated violations of the holy First Amendment. Nor was it the destruction of government agencies. It certainly wasn’t the persecution of the transes. Gangsterism on the international stage was excused. So was insulting foreign leaders and betraying long standing allies. Sucking up to dictators was tacitly approved. The outright contempt for the rule of law is something that people are conditioned to by now. Even blabbing out state secrets in a video conference is no cause for concern.

    A stock market crash, though, that’s a different matter. That’s what brought millions of USAians out to protest across all 50 states. Each person will have their own reasons, but the important thing is for them to see they are together. And it’s only a start, but that’s important in itself.

    However, ordinary people are not the only protesters, with rumours of various oligarchs complaining privately to the reality TV host. The crash last week wiped out over six trillion dollars. Just two months ago, the Wall St. traders were exhilarated by their new freedom to say “pussy” and “retard”. Owning the libs. Was it worth it? Do they have any influence?

    The USA seems to be trying to create as many major crises as possible, while simultaneously destroying all government capacity to deal with them. At some point, something must break, and very badly.

  • There’s only two Steve Jacksons

    It’s a strange fact that there is a Steve Jackson in the UK, who produces role-playing games, and a Steve Jackson in the USA, who produces card and board games. Although in the same business, there is rarely confusion. It’s a small market and customers know who they are dealing with. The two Steves have indeed worked together in the past.

    Steve Jackson USA is taking a real pasting from the new tariffs. Trouble is, his games have special dice, woodwork, plastics and tooling. They can’t source these from the USA. Not for lack of trying. There are simply no companies in the US that produce these parts. Even those who are interested do not have the capacity or expertise.

    The upshot of this is that a game which cost $25 will now cost $40. This is entirely because of the additional costs of the tariffs. They now have the choice of redesigning their games so that all parts can be sourced from the USA, or accepting that people can simply no longer afford to buy what is now a luxury product.

    That’s how it hits a small business in the USA. Spare a thought for Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French collectivity near Newfoundland. They export $3.5m worth of seafood to the US each year. Because they don’t import anything, they have been hit with a 99% tariff, essentially destroying their economy. For a product that the USA evidently cannot produce themselves.

  • No idea

    International backup day today apparently. Done it, good. Maybe I should do it more than once a year.

    I’ve been trying to understand maga and what they believe, but I don’t get it. It seems to be defined entirely by what they don’t want, rather than any idea of what they do.

    Mainly, it seems to be about exceptionalism, that USAians are somehow intrinsically superior and uniquely suited to running the entire world. Why and how is not clear, it just seems to be an accepted belief.

    Then there’s “owning the libs”. Liberals favour consensus and reality based policies. Climate change, LGBTQ+, public transport, sustainability, this sort of stuff. Maga rejects all of these things. Because the libs are in favour.

    If anything, they genuinely seem to blame these policies for all their perceived problems in the world. They believe that being nasty to the gays will improve the economic performance of the country. Or that shouting aggressively in people’s faces is the best form of diplomacy, it’s just that nobody has tried this before.

    It’s all so incoherent. We get decades of dogma about “free markets”, now it’s overt protectionism and they cheer along without missing a beat. Endless calls for tax cuts, then huge rises, all greeted enthusiastically. The latter is rationalised by the government itself that “tariffs are a tax cut”.

    I find it all so hard to understand because none of it makes sense.