(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)
The New Yorker has a fascinating piece about how the Look, We Invented New Money crew buried Rep. Katie Porter’s primary campaign under a couple of truckloads of actual US currency. Rep. Adam Schiff won the primary and will win the general election unless he falls into the Pacific off the Mendocino headlands. I hope he doesn’t owe the crypto cowboys anything more than his soul. Porter, a crypto critic allied with Senator Professor Warren, had $10 million dumped into the race against her, which was about a third of what Porter spent on her entire campaign. Between the funny money crowd and the Silicon Valley imperium, there’s a powerful new force in American politics. Its public face is Fairshake PAC, which is the operation that sank Porter’s campaign. And it is as ruthless as it is ambitious. From SFGate.
An unnamed political operative told the magazine: “Porter was a perfect choice because she let crypto declare, ‘If you are even slightly critical of us, we won’t just kill you—we’ll kill your f—king family, we’ll end your career.’ From a political perspective, it was a masterpiece.”
The scare campaign appears to have worked. The House of Representatives passed a pro-crypto bill, with bipartisan support, in May. Candidates with Fairshake’s support won their primaries in 85% of cases, the New Yorker wrote. Now, neither presidential candidate wants to run astray of the industry: Donald Trump spoke at a crypto conference, and Kamala Harris signaled her support. And Porter is forced out of Congress. Fairshake spokesperson Josh Vlasto provided SFGATE with a statement, which said the PAC supports candidates who “embrace innovation” and “and are committed to working across the aisle to get things done.”
The universe, it appears, has new masters.
Professor Loomis over at LGM hips us to the fact that Boeing continues to spiral. Now, its machinists are on strike. From The New York Times:
Nearly a month into the strike, negotiations between Boeing and the union resumed this week under federal mediation after a long break. But they collapsed on Tuesday with the company withdrawing its latest offer. The two sides traded blame for the breakdown.In a message to employees, Stephanie Pope, the chief executive of Boeing’s commercial airplane unit, said the union had made “demands far in excess of what can be accepted if we are to remain competitive as a business.” The union accused Boeing of being “hellbent” on sticking to the offer that labor leaders had previously rejected for being insufficient to garner the support of most of its more than 33,000 members.
Boeing is, quite frankly, a basket case.
The company, which hasn’t reported a full-year profit since 2018, is now losing tens of millions of dollars more every day that striking workers are not building planes. Boeing is also trying to persuade regulators to let it produce more 737 Max jets, its best-selling plane. And on Tuesday, S&P Global Ratings said it was considering lowering the company’s credit rating, which sits just above junk status, depending on the strike’s length.
Of course, Boeing isn’t making more 737 Max jets because the FAA found it curious that they kept falling out of the sky, their doors kept blowing out in midair, etc. etc. The sky is no longer the limit.
Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Family Guy” (Sabertooth Swing): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.
Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here, from 1934, is actual video of the assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and the French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou in Marseilles, 90 years ago this week. Alexander, a Serb, was responsible for uniting the various Balkan nations into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, albeit not without some violence which never really abated. The non-Serbs in the kingdom chafed at Alexander’s assumption of full royal, dictatorial power. By 1934, however, he had become concerned about the rise of right-wing movements in both Hungary and in Yugoslavia, and their ties to Fascist Italy, which was asserting claims over Yugoslavian territories. He came to France to try to settle all the these matters because Barthou had a working relationship with Mussolini. However, Mussolini was harboring members of the Ustashe, a Yugoslavian terror group led by Ante Pavelic. Yugoslavia was beset with internal strife, and the threat of Italy and the rising power of Nazi Germany. Alexander thought Barthou might find a way out of his mess. So he came to Marseilles.
As they drove in to the city, a Bulgarian nationalist (with ties to the Ustashe) named Vlado Chernozemski leaped onto the running board of the car and shot the king and the chauffeur to death, as well as four other people in the crowd, and Barthou, who caught a fatal bullet from a French policeman. (The killing of the chauffeur forced the car to stop, which is why the newsreel cameraman got such compelling footage.) Vlado is considered a hero in some parts of Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Ante Pavelic went on to rule Yugoslavia under the German Reich and is considered to be the most genocidal ruler outside of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot of Cambodia. History is so cool, but, often, it is very uncool at the same time.
It looks like politics in Oakland may be entering Beast Mode. From Politico:
“It might be a possibility,” Lynch said he recently told a confidant.
Apparently, California Governor Gavin Newsom is quite hot on this idea, god knoweth why. Oakland, as we all know, could do a lot worse than Marshawn Lynch as mayor, and has.
Both Newsom and Hendrickson encouraged Lynch to go “Beast Mode” in the race. Lynch, the golfcart-spinning California Golden Bear alum who starred on ESPN’s College GameDay’s first campus visit last weekend, addressed the potential opening as Oaklanders weigh a recall of scandal-plagued Mayor Sheng Thao. The city has struggled mightily with crime and is enduring two recalls, an FBI raid of Thao’s home and an intervention of state law enforcement and prosecutorial resources sent by Newsom. Oakland has also lost all of its major professional sports teams.
Lynch said he was encouraged to run on the sidelines of GameDay, and joked about the Chris Rock-directed movie “Head of State,” which co-starred the late comedian Bernie Mac. “Do you remember when Bernie Mac was walking through, when he was slapping the shit out of everybody?” Lynch asked. “That’s how I would be coming through there … slapping the shit out of everybody, like, ‘Get your shit together.’”
Strong platform.
Elsewhere in the wide world of sports, we lost a great one this week in Luis Tiant, the former pitcher for Cleveland, Boston, New York, and a couple of other teams, but whose lasting impact came as a member of the Red Sox. In 1968, Tiant was a power pitcher. Teamed in Cleveland with Sam McDowell, Tiant won 20 games and put up a 1.06 ERA. But then his arm went sour. He made himself into a craftsman, developing his trademark spinning windup, occasionally bobbing his head, changing his arm angles and release points, and utterly baffling hitters. He worked his way back up through the minors and, in 1972, he hooked on with the Red Sox, where he became a legendary big game pitcher. In the 1975 World Series, he completely unglued the Cincinnati Reds in Game One, and then, in Game Four, he threw everything he could think of at the Reds, throwing 163 pitches, and pitching a complete game to win 5-4. In that game, Tiant even singled and, eventually scored the winning run. In 1978, he beat the Toronto Blue Jays to set up the famous one-game playoff with the Yankees.
By then, Tiant was a Fenway star, the first in a line of Latin players who have helped mitigate the Red Sox sorry history in matters of race. The line now goes through Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, and, now, Rafael Devers of Venezuela. I remember a day in the 2004 playoffs when the old ballpark was festooned with Dominican Republic flags. It was a sight to see for those of us who had labored through years of Red Sox lineups full of bulky, slow-footed Caucasians.
I mean, seriously, who else could get Tip O’Neill and Ted Kennedy to intervene with Castro to get his parents out of Cuba so his Dad, a veteran of the Negro Leagues, could see his son pitch in the World Series? The man carried a 12-foot cloud of charm around with him, or maybe it was from his ever-present cigar. After the death of Johnny Pesky, Luis became the unofficial Fenway maitre d’. Any day when Luis was there was a good day to be at the ballpark. Vaya con dios, my friend.
Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found. From National Geographic:
In September, on the broad expanse of the Central Rongbuk Glacier, below the north face of Mount Everest, a National Geographic documentary team that included the photographer and director Jimmy Chin, along with filmmakers and climbers Erich Roepke and Mark Fisher, examined the boot more closely. Inside, they discovered a foot, remains that they instantly recognized as belonging to Andrew Comyn Irvine, or Sandy, as he was known, who vanished 100 years ago with the famed climber George Mallory. “I lifted up the sock,” Chin says, describing the moment, “and there’s a red label that has A.C. IRVINE stitched into it.” Chin says he and his companions recognized the significance of the moment in unison. “We were all literally running in circles dropping F-bombs.”
OK, that last part may be too much information.
Mallory’s remains were located in 1999, while the whereabouts of Irvine’s were unknown. “It’s the first real evidence of where Sandy ended up,” says Chin of the discovery. “A lot of theories have been put out there.” He hopes the discovery helps explain what happened on the mountain in 1924, and brings some closure to Irvine’s relatives who revere him still. “When someone disappears and there’s no evidence of what happened to them, it can be really challenging for families. And just having some definitive information of where Sandy might’ve ended up is certainly [helpful], and also a big clue for the climbing community as to what happened.”
The pre-eminent mystery, of course, is whether or not Mallory and Irvine made it to the summit and then met disaster on the way down. Supposedly, Irvine had a camera which, if it’s ever found, might contain the final proof, one way or the other.
…it had been Irvine who had carried the Kodak Vest Pocket Camera lent by expedition member Howard Somervell. The undeveloped film inside, it was thought, might contain the only conclusive evidence of their success. And so, the quest to find Irvine’s body acquired more interest—on par, in some circles, with the search for Amelia Earhart or Michael Rockefeller.
Because it was there, I guess.
Hey, Sci News. Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!
Dubbed Ardetosaurus viator, this dinosaur was a type of diplodoci, a family of sauropod dinosaurs that includes some of the longest creatures ever to walk the planet. The remains of Ardetosaurus viator were excavated in 1993 from the Howe-Stephens Quarry in theMorrison Formation.“Ardetosaurus viator is the first skeletally mature sauropod specimen described from the Howe-Stephens Quarry,” the paleontologists said.
“This specimen sheds light on the variability of morphological features in diplodocine sauropods such as laminar capture in the cervico-dorsal transition and laminar transitions in caudal vertebrae,” they added. “Additionally, the specimen preserves a relatively rare first chevron with a peculiar morphology, which in comparison with other sauropods and other non-avian dinosaurs, highlights the need to further investigate the possible recognition of sexual dimorphism in sauropod dinosaurs through micromorphological characteristics in chevrons.”
So gentlemen Ardetosaurus and lady Adetosaurus didn’t look the same. Vive la difference!, I say. I always was a chevron man myself, and I’m happy now because they, and their chevrons, lived then.
I’ll be back next week—not sure about the holiday Monday—for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and The New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for all the folks visited by Milton this week and by Helene last week. And those people in Japan coming out from under Typhoon Shanshan, and those living through the aftermath of Hurricane Ernesto, and in Morocco, and Colombia, and in the flood zones in India and Bangladesh, Libya, and the flood zones all across the Ohio Valley, and on the Horn of Africa, and in Tanzania and Kenya, and Sudan. and in the English midlands, and in Virginia, and in Texas and Louisiana, and in California, and the flood zones of Indonesia, and in the storm-battered south of Georgia, and in Kenya, and in the flood areas in Dubai (!) and in Pakistan, and Brazil, and in the flood zones in Russia and Kazakhstan, and in the flood zones in Iran, where loose crocodiles are becoming a problem, and in the flood zones on Oahu, and in the fire zones in and around Los Angeles, and in Wyoming, Oregon, and western Canada, and Australia, and in north Texas, and in Lahaina, where they’re still trying to recover their lives, and under the volcano in Iceland, and for the gun-traumatized folks in Austin and at UNLV, and in Philadelphia, and in Perry, Iowa, and for the good Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, who didn’t deserve this, and especially for our fellow citizens in the LGBTQ+ community, who deserve so much better from their country than they’ve been getting.
