Cocaine Bear
A bear ate 40 kg of cocaine that drug runners had dropped from an aeroplane, and unsurprisingly died. Now a movie is being made about Cocaine Bear aka Pablo Escobear, directed by Elizabeth Banks.
Jon Stokes' Substack
Jon Stokes' new Substack, doxa, is about how AI/ML intersects with cultural issues.
Wishart contra bloggers
SNP MP Pete Wishart blasts against pro-indy anti-SNP bloggers:
Meet the anti-SNP ‘indy’ bloggers. A more curious bunch of irascible and irritable bunch of contrarians you’re never likely to meet. Over the course of the past couple of years they have become an easily recognisable social media community and to their followers they are legion.
Then there are our friends the anti SNP ‘bad’ bloggers. Their incessant cynicism, their limitless negativity, their determination to bring down the SNP’s leadership sets them well apart from the rest of the independence supporting community. These are the SNPbaad bloggers and if you come into contact with them or their followers you will recognise them immediately.
‘Yes’ social media is their territory and they walk it like angry behemoths devouring all and anybody who gets in their way. Over the course of the past few years they have built up a formidable and loyal following. With an output that can only be described as ‘industrial’.
What do these bloggers care about? Three things: Firstly, independence:
To them all we have to do is ‘use the mandate’ ‘get off our knees’ and ‘just do it’. The ‘plebiscite’ is their favourite just now but if that’s not dead end enough for you then there are various UDIs aplenty.
Secondly, unpopular SNP polices:
Then there are the wedge issues. It is no coincidence that to a ‘man’ they are opposed to GRA reform and that they all hold deeply social conservative views raging against the ‘woke’.
Thirdly, Alex Salmond:
the trial of Alex Salmond and the inquiry into the handling of complaints against him
Wings contra SNP
Stuart Campbell wonders whether the SNP really want independence:
The party professes to be seeking a big majority at Holyrood so that its mandate for a second independence referendum will be clear and (it asserts) undeniable.
But if that was really the case, wouldn’t it be bending over backwards to create unity in the Yes movement, not division? Would it really be forcing through the widely-despised Hate Crime Bill in a mad pre-election rush? Would it really be going so far out of its way to push the enormously controversial and poisonously divisive transgender issue? Would it be so doggedly and spitefully alienating a huge swathe of its own members with its treatment of Joanna Cherry?
Is it an accident – in which case its leadership is the most incompetent and stupid in Scottish political history – or is it on purpose, in which case the only possible goal must be to deliberately AVOID getting a majority, so that it has a foolproof excuse for not delivering independence and can sit back and enjoy five more cosy and lucrative years in power, while still being able to implement all its unpopular social-engineering laws because the Greens, Lib Dems and Labour will back them?
Personally I think the cock-up theory is history is far more likely than the conspiracy theory. Politicians do incompetent things and cock it up time and time again -- just look at the behaviour of all the parties in 2019 during the crisis over Brexit. Or consider that most MPs can't do simple maths. Almost all politicians aren't geniuses, and many are simply not that bright.
Refuse to be stored
I, for one, refuse to be stored in black plastic bags. And I hope you do too.
Tactical voting for the Scottish election
James Kelly asks how can independence supporters vote tactically in May's Scottish Parliamentary election, to maximise the chances for independence:
The bottom line is that, as far as the list vote is concerned, we need to jump one way or the other. We either need a single, credible pro-indy alternative to the SNP with big name backing and broad support - or we need to forget the whole idea and get behind the SNP (or the Greens, or Wightman). Either is fine, but it needs to be one or the other, it needs to be wholehearted, and the choice needs to be made very soon. If there are discussions going on behind the scenes, I hope there's a sense of urgency to them.
I agree with this analysis. You need about 5% of the votes in any region to get a list MSP, and this is very unlikely to happen for either ISP or AFI with them running against each other. If they want to have any impact, they need to join forces and ideally have some big-name candidates, for example Salmond or Wightman.
On the constituency vote, it's even more straightforward: the SNP are the only game in town. If you abstain or vote for any other party (and that includes the Greens) you are causing harm to independence, because literally the only alternative to an SNP constituency MSP is a unionist constituency MSP.
This is also true. The constituency vote is a FPTP election and if you want indy, the SNP are the only game in town.
Wokeness in US private schools
Bari Weiss writes on how expensive US private schools are going woke -- often to the disquiet of parents and sometimes causing mental health issues for the children:
This has hypocrisy:
it’s bizarre — at best — for a school like Harvard-Westlake to hold forth constantly about social justice as it drops more than $40 million on a new off-campus athletic complex [...] These schools are the privilege of the privilege of the privilege. They say nonstop that they are all about inclusion. But they are by definition exclusive. These schools are for the tippity top of society
Wokeness as a status marker:
Power in America now comes from speaking woke, a highly complex and ever-evolving language [...] Woe betide the working-class kid who arrives in college and uses Latino instead of “Latinx,” or who stumbles conjugating verbs because a classmate prefers to use the pronouns they/them. Fluency in woke is an effective class marker and key for these princelings to retain status in university and beyond
Parents organising in secret, fearful of repercussions if they are seen to be against wokeness:
The dissidents use pseudonyms and turn off their videos when they meet for clandestine Zoom calls. They are usually coordinating soccer practices and carpools, but now they come together to strategize. They say that they could face profound repercussions if anyone knew they were talking.
Hate Crime Bill
Scotland's Justice Minister Humza Yousaf cites support from Inclusion Scotland for his Hate Crime Bill. He omits to mention that Inclusion Scotland gets money (£800,000 a year) from the Scottish government. I'm sure this is just an oversight on his part.
UK government rejects indyref2
The UK government has said it will take legal action to stop a referendum on Scottish independence, regardless of how many seats independence supporters win in the May election. If Scotland is kept in the UK against its will, what should we call that: a democracy, or colonial oppression?
Scottish Secretary Alister Jack said: "We have a geographical border between England and Wales, and England and Scotland. To create a physical border and an economic border would be a terrible mistake. We all have family and friends who live in different parts of the UK. To break that up would be a terrible sadness."
To which I reply to the UK government: all the things you say are bad about Scottish independence -- that it creates a physical border, hinders trade and movement of people, harms the economy, that it creates a smaller unit which will have trouble prospering because in geopolitics size matters, that it splits people from their friends and family -- all these are things you did with Brexit.
Wee Ginger Dug contra Johnson
Paul Kavanagh says the UK government’s rejection of indyref2 is a negation of democracy:
The pronouncements of Johnson and other figures in the Conservative party that they are not going to allow Scotland to hold another independence referendum no matter how the people vote are profoundly anti-democratic. A political party in a democracy has every right to make its case to the electorate about why it opposes a referendum. It has every right to explain to voters why it believes that such a policy is wrong-headed or damaging. However what it doesn’t have the right to do while still claiming to respect democracy is to impose its will on the people after the electorate have listened to their arguments, have voted, and have decided, “Naa, we still want a referendum anyway.” The entire point of an election is that the electorate gets to choose.
Indeed so.
The Conservative insistence that Scotland cannot get what Scotland votes for within the UK only reinforces the case for independence. If decisions about Scotland are to be subject to an effective veto by a British Government which enjoys only limited and minority support within Scotland and which derives its authority from a mandate given to it by voters elsewhere in the UK then it proves that the UK is not a partnership. It is simply a mechanism whereby the largest nation in the UK is enabled to enforce its will on the smaller nations.
The UK, in its present form, is simply not fit for purpose. If it was reformed so that all of the 4 nations of the UK have parity of esteem, and none could force their will on the others, then perhaps it would be worthwhile to remain in it. But, as it stands, the Westminster system is profoundly undemocratic.
Marco Rubio supports Unionization
Republican senator and 2016 presidential candidate Marco Rubio supports Amazon unionization drive:
It’s hard to overstate the importance of what Republican Senator Marco Rubio did in supporting workers in Alabama over Amazon, as it has been an article of faith since the 1970s that unions and the Republican Party are mortal enemies. What’s fascinating is how Rubio approached the problem in cultural terms. After saying that “the days of conservatives being taken for granted by the business community are over,” he then went on to attack human resource departments.
A number of people, such as Scott Alexander, have pointed out that it makes sense for the Republicans to go after working class votes.
And in the UK, Brexit was mostly supported by working class people and implemented by the Conservatives. Furthermore, in the 2019 general election the Tories won many "red wall" seats in the Midlands and north of England; including Bolsover, which is probably not anyone's idea of a typical Tory constituency.
Turd Hotel
Did you know Edinburgh has a hotel shaped like a gigantic golden turd? It even won the prestigious award for Worst Building of 2020.
Now there is a petition to put googly eyes on the jobby.
Here an artist's impression of what it might look like:
This would make it look even more like the pile-of-poo emoji (💩). Magnificent, I'm sure you'll agree.