Why something and not nothing?

Generic content

I’m writing Side View this week with a new thingo in the backend of the Crikey site, which one of our excellent production editors, the estimable Jack (hi Jack!), patiently took me through yesterday. I suspect Jack regards me now as a grumpy old man who needs being nursed through even the most basic technological changes, and I fear he is right, even though it seems like yesterday that I was rolling my eyes like a poker machine as a teenager at my mother for not knowing how to program the VCR. Anyway in this new builder when you want to create a new section, you ask it to open a “Generic Content” tab — and basically I’m sold on the whole thing purely because of that name, which perfectly describes everything I do.

Blockchain! Gamechanger! Crypto!

How many Australians own or have otherwise dabbled in the stupidity of craptocurrencies? According to spruikers of shitcoin, delirium and other ways of losing your money, lots! One in six, according to Finder (ah, Finder, the prize dickhead of Australian corporations). “Nearly 20% of Australians Now Own Cryptocurrency”, claimed journal of record Crowdfund Insider. Any takers for 25%, according to Swyftx (“the top-rated Australian cryptocurrency exchange”)? Would you believe 29%, as claimed by Yahoo Finance, citing the august Independent Reserve’s Cryptocurrency Index?

How about one-third? 40%?

Choice offers a slightly more sober one in nine Australians, which still sounds way too high. Or we can ask an actual reliable pollster: according to Roy Morgan Research in April, just 5% of Australian adults own one of the many varieties of shitcoins.

Why have I suddenly got animated about crapto? Because last week Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones tweeted that 20% of Australian adults have bought cryptocurrencies. My bullshit detectors went to red alert and I did some checking. Jones’ actual speech about which he was tweeting actually says this: “The tax commissioner tells me almost 20% have or plan to try novel investments like crypto.”

Which, as you can see, is rather different. Sounds like those union surveys where XX% of the workforce are perennially about to leave their jobs — ahead of demands for more funding for that industry. Forgive the rant, but as they say in the classics, there is bullshit, there is crypto bullshit, and then there’s crypto marketing bullshit.

Everything’s big in America

It’s hard to avoid Side View becoming a long litany of bad things happening in America. Here’s a big dump of such stuff, but in the next edition I’ll try to mix things up by having stuff about bad things happening elsewhere.

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there’s a global drift to Putin-style authoritarianism. Has the CIA done more harm than good (and why did they even need to ask?) The Romney myth — no, the alleged “mistreatment” of Mitt Romney — did not lead to the current embrace of fascism by the Republicans. Let’s stop pretending “polarisation” is some natural political force — it’s been driven by the right demonising the left. Ginni Thomas, the wife of far-right alleged sexual harasser Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, directly tried to have the 2020 election result overturned. Los Angeles municipal government has been rocked by disgusting racist remarks by prominent Hispanic leaders. IT security is crucial to protecting abortion rights, but the human factor is what will undermine them further in the US. And how mandatory reporting of child abuse may have been a policy disaster (this is exactly the sort of article every policymaker should read).

Science and other dark arts

How you draw a circle reveals something about you and your culture (it’s good to know that when robots rise up to destroy humankind, they’ll know literally everything about us). I’ve been calling rubbish on claims about social media echo chambers for a while, but here’s a novel approach: most people don’t have echo chambers for their political beliefs because they can’t be bothered. Trauma, recovery and self-control are linked to the way in which we remember the past and project the future, and how quickly their values change for us. AC Grayling on why there is something instead of nothing (or, more accurately, why you shouldn’t ask that question).

Hell is other countries

The latest in Truss (still in office as of writing): is she the UK’s François Mitterrand? Is the UK an emerging market — though only in the bad sense? (Reminds me of the Not the Nine O’Clock News joke: “Today Britain had its application to join the Third World rejected.”) How Uyghur advocates are putting pressure on US firms and sports regarding China. The Saudi oil production cut is an attempt to interfere in the US midterm elections to help Trump. There’s a major impediment to the Belarusian regime and Putin sending Belarusian troops to fight Ukrainians: they might refuse. Meta… not having a good week/month/year in the virtual world.

Reviews and misc

I love this piece from Scott Robinson on the links between sobriety and neoliberalism, inter alia, and will have more to say myself on such issues in coming months. John Warhurst on freedom of religion and its hypocrisies. I have my issues with John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids: killer plants and the one thing that could make them a real menace, everyone getting blinded? Come on). But 1953’s The Kraken Wakes, involving an alien invasion in which the aliens remain out of sight at the bottom of the ocean the whole time, has quite remarkable contemporary resonances, which Matthew James Seidel explores. And how Hilary Mantel brought historical characters to plausible and vivid life.

Finally

If you think Siena’s pretty cool, this is the book for you — hopefully it contains a section on how annoying it is when slowpoke tourists coming down the tower from the previous tour hold everyone up. Teaching a robot dog to keep goal (if I might suggest, telling the robot she’s a good girl might improve her performance even more). Mandatory dog content. And bonus dog content.