… after 500 days of the Muscovite Soviet Russian invasion of Ukraine. The most-recent one, I mean. And if you don't have fatigue from that you haven't been paying attention (and probably don't read this blawg, so you'll never hear about it anyway, right?). But there are a lot more underworld-linked sausages on this platter…
- …like the fatigue of public worries about the missing submersible while ignoring the needlessly-and-cruelly-for-political-advantage-drowned refugees. Many of whom are refugees because their home nations have been ruthlessly exploited by billionaires. Remind me again of the demographic on that submersible?
- And even that is less appalling, less demonic, than heavy-metal non-revenue sharing by even "licensing" streaming services. One wonders if Mr Ek's algorithm has an old Beatles tune on "heavy rotation" (irony of that source entirely intentional) as he seeks to recharacterize and move his revenues elsewhere. Actually, I really don't wonder at all; it's (im)morally certain.
And no algorithmic system that includes "classic rock, folk, classical, and some jazz but nothing racist or antiintellectual" appears to exist, so I'd be out of luck as a pure listener anyway. Every time I've tried, I've gotten smacked about ten songs in with something from New Jersey or Indiana or the warmed-over long-ago-shed scales of a bandersnatch. It's worse than being Rickrolled.
- Speaking of worthless, antiintellectual Californians foisted off on the rest of the country (roughly contemporaneously, sad to say), consider my former Commander in Chief. Or better yet, move on and pretend the 80s didn't happen.
- But the 80s did give us a prominent "historian" who should be a leading exhibit in the Dunning-Kruger Hall of Fame (recalling that the most-common expression of the Dunning-Kruger effect is an overstatement neither made in nor supported by the original paper, which is about subjective overestimation of competence and not about objective incompetence). Even from his unassailable position, though, he's not immune to criticism concerning his historiographical prowess. Who knows? Maybe judges will start taking one of their own (Justice Holmes) seriously and stop counting notes (in unfamiliar types of music) as a definitive measure of excessive copying. Or maybe not, because that would be precisely the opposite of what the actual Dunning-Kruger Effect predicts; it would also require judges to admit that not all of their jokes are actually funny, that they don't get suddenly sexier putting on a black robe, and that a bench composed of nine individuals who never made it past freshman math or laboratory science isn't quite qualified to pass judgment on scientific questions.
But this all invokes Brandolini's Law — and it's helpful to remember that a judge can declare a "law" based solely upon others' misstatements and mischaracterizations of facts, while a scientific law is subject to constant testing and reverification…
- Or it could be just another non-judge lawyer beyond his own apparent expertise, but within his own relatively-well-known dilletantism, excoriating a book critical of a folk hero (whom I refuse to further glorify by naming) because it, well, criticizes that folk hero… and appears to be based upon source selections that said lawyer doesn't like for reasons he does not explain. (I'll ignore the irony here of a prosecutor objecting to source selectivity; but at least I recognize it.) I'm not an expert on the subject individual. I have, however — in a professional capacity — read a significant set of source documents from the aerial-warfare-component perspective, and they were pretty uniformly, if oh-so-respectfully-within-the-chain-of-command, disapproving of the subject individual's performance from 1944 through 1951. (I merely haven't seen satisfactory source documents regarding actual performance outside that period… except those implied in the next sentence.) But then, given the author of that review's think-tank affiliation, neglect of the subject individual's role in the Bonus Riots and how that necessarily influenced later events is not really surprising (especially given the Reagan-worship of that think tank). Not to mention the post-firing whingeing by the subject individual. Again, the irony here of this coming from a prosecutor…
It's entirely possible that the book being reviewed is not a very good one. Counsel, however, has failed to put forth a prima facie case, particularly when evaluated by those with specific professional expertise (whose expertise is sufficient to have some inkling of how much they don't know). That is, acquittal is not a proof of actual innocence — but the proper response to this book review is an acquittal of the accused book (or at best a good Glaswegian "Not Proven").