Black hole wakes up

The New Neo Posted on by

How? Why?

Here’s what I’m talking about:

Suddenly, in late 2019, the previously unremarkable galaxy SDSS1335+0728 started shining brighter than ever before. To understand why, astronomers used data from several space and ground-based observatories, including the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), to track how the galaxy’s brightness has varied.

In a study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics today (June 18), they conclude that they are witnessing changes never seen before in a galaxy — likely the result of the sudden awakening of the massive black hole at its core.

Did it hear some sort of cosmic alarm clock? Get a jolt of caffeine?

Some phenomena, like supernova explosions or tidal disruption events — when a star gets too close to a black hole and is torn apart — can make galaxies suddenly light up. But these brightness variations typically last only a few dozen or, at most, a few hundred days. SDSS1335+0728 is still growing brighter today, more than four years after it was first seen to ‘switch on’. Moreover, the variations detected in the galaxy, which is located 300 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, are unlike any seen before, pointing astronomers towards a different explanation. …

Massive black holes — with masses over one hundred thousand times that of our Sun — exist at the center of most galaxies, including the Milky Way. “These giant monsters usually are sleeping and not directly visible,” explains co-author Claudio Ricci, from the Diego Portales University, also in Chile. “In the case of SDSS1335+0728, we were able to observe the awakening of the massive black hole, [which] suddenly started to feast on gas available in its surroundings, becoming very bright.”

“[This] process (…) has never been observed before,” Hernández García says.

As Hamlet said, ““There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Customer “service”

The New Neo Posted on by

Tired of politics? Let’s talk about a much more pleasant topic: customer service.

And yes, that’s sarcasm – although, come to think of it, as frustrating as customer service can be these days, it actually is more pleasant than politics.

I had ordered something from Amazon that was difficult if not impossible to obtain elsewhere, and I needed it by this coming Monday. I had ordered it nearly three weeks prior to that, and the Amazon algorithm had assured me it would get here in time.

I waited patiently. But each time I tracked my order it hadn’t shipped yet. So today I decided to give Amazon a call.

The experience I had with customer service is hardly unique to Amazon; I find that it’s fairly typical these days. First I got some sort of computerized voice telling me I had to verify my account – even though I was on the cellphone that is connected to the account. They sent me a text, I did what the text said – but not fast enough for Amazon, apparently accustomed to the more nimble-figured young. Even though I’d done it quickly (as far as I was concerned), and a text message from Amazon said “Thanks for verifying your account,” the bot on the telephone thought otherwise: “We’re sorry, but you did not verify your account.”

Another phone call, another wait, and this time I knew enough to be lightning quick and successfully verified the account. But this time I got someone on the phone – an actual person – who insisted that my phone number should be something else.

I tried again. This time the verification worked. The person I was talking to had an accent, like all the others, but I could understand what she was saying without much difficulty. She told me that my order had gotten “stuck.” That was the exact word she used. When I asked where it had gotten stuck – at Amazon, or in the shipping process – she reluctantly admitted it seemed to have been sitting at Amazon all that time. But now, now it was unstuck and would be on its way.

I expressed concern that it might not get to me by Monday. All she would say was that I’d get an email in a day or two confirming the shipment. She could not or would not tell me another thing. So I said I didn’t want an email, I wanted the package. She stonewalled. I asked to speak to someone who might know more and would be empowered to help with this. She said everyone there had the same authority as she.

I’ve discovered with customer service these days, in the information duel in which they are determined to give out the least possible amount of information and the customer is determined to extract more information, that there are magic words that act like keys to open locked doors. One of those keys is, of course, the word “agent.” Another is the word “retention” (that’s for Comcast, for example). In this case I realized I’d not said the word “supervisor;” I’d merely asked to talk to a person above her who was empowered to do more. That is a supervisor, of course. But now I uttered the magic words, “I want to speak with a supervisor,” and she immediately answered “Okay” and put me on hold.

Awful muzak and a wait, during which I pondered whether there actually would be a supervisor, or whether this was a cruel practical joke by my customer service representative and I would wait and wait and wait for the supervisor who never came.

Fortunately, after maybe a ten-minute wait, a bona fide supervisor came on the line. I went through my tale of woe again. He told me that the previous person had released my package for shipment and that it “should” be here by Monday. I expressed doubt. He repeated Monday. Then I asked him how the package would be shipped, and whether, since this had been Amazon’s mistake, the shipping could be expedited by Amazon.

This question seemed to function as another magic word. “Okay, I’ll check!” he said brightly. When he came back he said it would cost me an extra $11.50. “Do you mean to tell me,” I said, “that Amazon – which was at fault here – would not cover the mailing at this point?” He assured me that, although he wasn’t able to do that at this moment, Amazon would ultimately reimburse me.

Do I believe this? Perhaps. But I okayed the payment and the thing should come to me tomorrow.

And it only took about an hour and a half.

Hot enough for you?

The New Neo Posted on by

It certainly is in New England – hot enough, that is.

And muggy. The air is incredibly heavy, and thunderstorms threaten. I haven’t been outside today and maybe I’ll just stay indoors.

I went out yesterday, though, when the weather was very similar. As I stepped outside, I was reminded of a passage from a book I last read many many years ago and liked very much at the time, Arthur Koestler’s The Lotus and the Robot, a 1961 work about India and Japan. Here are the opening sentences:

The sewers of Bombay had been opened by mistake, I was told, before the tide had come in. The damp heat, impregnated by their stench, invaded the air-conditioned cabin the moment the door of the Viscount was opened. As we descended the steps I had the sensation that a wet, smelly diaper was being wrapped around my head by some abominable joker.

There’s no sewer smell here. But a heavy wetness in the air? Yes indeed.

It’s roundup time again

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) RIP actor Donald Sutherland, dead at 88. His career was long and varied; I’m pretty sure the first movie I saw him in was Mash. I see that three of his children are actors.

(2) It’s the 50th anniversary of that Boston travesty – forced busing – as this not very good Boston Globe article reminds us. I previously wrote about forced busing in this post.

(3) Some drugs for enlarged prostate seem to help decrease the risk for Lewy Body dementia. That’s related to Parkinson’s, and I wondered when I clicked on the article whether the same drugs help prevent Parkinson’s. Here’s what it said:

A new study suggests that certain drugs commonly used to treat enlarged prostate may also decrease the risk for dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). This observational finding may seem surprising, but it mirrors previous work by the University of Iowa Health Care team that links the drugs to a protective effect in another neurodegenerative condition—Parkinson’s disease. The new findings were published online on June 19, 2024, in Neurology.

The UI researchers think that a specific side effect of the drugs targets a biological flaw shared by DLB and Parkinson’s disease, as well as other neurodegenerative diseases, raising the possibility that they may have broad potential for treating a wide range of neurodegenerative conditions.

That’s good, but can it slow the progression of the disease once it’s already gotten a hold? That would be wonderful news.

(4) The DA of Alameda County – of which Oakland, California is a part – is facing a recall election in November. Now the mayor of Oakland joins her. The reason is crime and the fallout from crime.

(5) Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, by Melanie Phillips. An excerpt:

Antisemitism is the delusional hatred and fear of Jews, Judaism or the Jewish people. Unlike other prejudices, it has unique characteristics applied to no other group, people or cause. It’s an obsessional and unhinged narrative based entirely on lies about the Jewish people; it accuses them of crimes of which they are not only innocent but the victims; it holds them to impossible standards expected of no-one else; it depicts them as a global conspiracy of unique malice and power; and it invests them with diabolical influence over the entire world in order to serve their own interests at the expense of others.

Anti-Zionism has exactly the same characteristics. While criticism of Israel’s policies is entirely legitimate, anti-Zionism treats Israel and Jewish national self-determination differently from any other country, people or cause. Israel is demonised, dehumanised and delegitimised in order to bring about its destruction. Israelis are accused of crimes of which they are not only innocent but the victims; they are held to impossible standards expected of no other people, country or cause; Zionism is depicted as a global conspiracy of unique malice and power; and Zionists and Israelis are invested with diabolical influence.

I’m suddenly seeing polls that show Biden gaining on Trump …

The New Neo Posted on by

… and that fills me with dread.

But I’d been feeling dread about the 2024 election already, even when the polls were good. I have distrust for polls – although not as much distrust as some people have, because I think they sometimes measure something that’s valid, especially when they change. But how it translates to an election is anyone’s guess. The 2022 Red Wave is a good example; the GOP did much less well than predicted. And 2016 was a case where the GOP candidate did better than expected.

This year I remain astonished that Joe Biden has more than 20% of the vote. It should be a complete blowout for Trump, but I have no gut feeling that he’ll even win. There are so many ways this can go wrong. There’s the constant lawfare, which new polls indicate might be the reason Biden is doing somewhat better than before (see this). There’s the wild card of fraud and rigging; the only question being whether they will be able to do it effectively, not whether they would do it if they could. There’s the backlash to the repeal of Roe. And of course it’s a long way to November, and a lot can happen in the meantime.

In a very gloomy post, John Hinderaker also mentions that the polls for Congressional candidates aren’t going too well for the GOP either. I haven’t even begun to follow that, and I haven’t checked it out myself, but I don’t like hearing it.

But it’s not just the polls. As I said, I realize polls can mislead and it’s also quite early. What’s far more important to me is that so many people are willing to support another four years of Biden or of Harris. Is it just because they really really hate Trump? I don’t think it’s that simple. Hinderaker seems to think another GOP candidate – perhaps any other GOP candidate – would be blowing Biden away in the polls. I disagree. A great many people would never vote for Trump, it’s true. But a great many of those people wouldn’t vote for any Republican. And there are a significant number of Trump voters who wouldn’t be voting for any other person but Trump. So Trump repels and he attracts.

And yes, the left would try to destroy any other GOP presidential candidate.

I think the thing that really disturbs me is that so many people aren’t disturbed by developments that, even a couple of decades ago, would have outraged a lot more people. The current widespread use of lawfare as a political weapon is a big one. Too many people are very happy with an “ends justifies the means” approach, and the very successful Gramscian march of the left through the institutions is responsible for that and so many other obviously reprehensible things.

I spend a lot of time on this blog analyzing why people think and feel the way they do, especially in the political realm. Sometimes I’m criticized for that, with the argument from the critics that it’s not worth bothering because it doesn’t do much if any good. I’m probably more sympathetic to that argument than one might think. Nevertheless my curiosity about people drives me to wonder and to speculate. Nearly everyone I know is politically on the other side from me, and if there’s one thing that’s been apparent for years it’s that, for the most part, nothing could change their point of view short of something catastrophic – and perhaps not even that. I find this stunning but true, and it seems to be a basic fact of human nature.

And then there are articles such as this one from the NY Post, which isn’t about an American but is relevant to the question of political change (the topic that propelled me to become a blogger in the first place). The article is about an Israeli peace activist who has changed her mind. She is hardly alone in that among Israelis, but she probably has the most dramatic reason for her change:

An Israeli peace activist who was kidnapped and held hostage for 53 days in Gaza said the horrifying experience shattered her longstanding belief that there could be peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

“I don’t believe in peace, I don’t, sorry. I changed my mind,” Ada Sagi, who was captured by Hamas on Oct. 7, at the start of the Israel-Hamas war, told the BBC.

Talk about getting “mugged by reality”!

She’s sorry, and I’m sorry too – sorry that reality dictates that peace there is a pipe dream, unless it’s ultimately accomplished by a larger war. The dream is so much more pleasant. But she had to give it up:

“For many years, I believed in peace. It’s the reason why I started to teach Arabic at school. Maybe it will bring peace between the Arab people in Israel and the Jewish people,” she recalled thinking. “But from year to year, I understand Hamas don’t want it.” …

Sagi recalled during the harrowing 53-day period she was held hostage, students were paid to watch over her and the other hostages inside an apartment in the southern city of Khan Younis.

“I heard them say… 70 shekels ($18.83) for a day,” she said.

It’s a short article and not very illuminating; you have to fill in the blanks yourself. But although it shouldn’t take being kidnapped and savagely treated to effect a political change like that, perhaps for most people it takes something just that dramatic or close to it. The terrorists’ worst tactical move on October 7 may have been that many (and probably most) of the people whom the terrorists tortured, raped, and murdered were on the Israeli left and were peace activists, like this woman. But the events of October 7 and beyond have convinced most of that population that a 2-state negotiated solution must be abandoned.

That’s political change resulting from catastrophe. It can happen. But I hope that’s not what it will take in this country.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) RIP Willie Mays at 93. I confess that I was previously unaware that he was still alive.

(2) Victor Davis Hanson writes:

… [The left] is in full panic that its unconstitutional efforts to destroy Trump will obviously be used against itself—given it knows that if it returned to power it would go after its enemies in precisely the same, any-means-necessary ways that it had sought to destroy Trump. That is, they have destroyed norms and have established dangerous new precedents that they just assume, given their Jacobin nature, must rebound against themselves.

(3) The Connecticut Bar Association warns its members not to point out the obvious about the NY kangaroo court that convicted Trump:

On the afternoon of Thursday, June 16th, the Connecticut Bar Association (CBA) sent an email to all of its membership, signed by the CBA President, Vice-President, and President-elect. The email, available here, warns all members of the CBA that they better not say, anywhere, in any form or forum, that Donald Trump’s trial, which, as you know, resulted in him being convicted of 34 felonies, was a “‘sham,’ a ‘hoax,’ [or] ‘rigged,’”, or that “our justice system is ‘corrupt and rigged,’” or that “the judge was ‘corrupt’ [or] ‘highly unethical.’” The email also stated that CBA members need to speak up in support of the Trump verdict because “[t]o remain silent renders us complicit in that effort,” i.e. the “effort” to damage the judiciary.

Wow.

(4) In response to #3 above, Jonathan Turley writes:

My concern is not with the plea for lawyers to take care that their comments do not encourage such “aggressive tactics.” The problem is the suggestion that lawyers are acting somehow unprofessionally in denouncing what many view as a two-tier system of justice and the politicalization of our legal system.

Like many, I believe that the Manhattan case was a flagrant example of such weaponization of the legal system and should be denounced by all lawyers. It is a return, in my view, to the type of political prosecution once common in this country.

For those lawyers who view such prosecutions as political, they are speaking out in defense of what they believe is the essence of blind justice in America. What is “reckless” to the Connecticut Bar is righteous to others. Notably, the Bar officials did not write to denounce attacks on figures like Bill Barr or claims that the Justice Department was rigging justice during the Trump years.

Of course they didn’t. Those were good attacks from the left on the right.

(5) Climate activists vandalize Stonehenge. They remind me a bit of the Taliban.

(6) Netanyahu says that the Biden administration actually has been withholding weapons from Israel in recent months.

Reporting on the Gaza famine that never was: why does the MSM spread the lies?

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “Barry Meislin.”]

The UN says Whoopsies, probably no famine in Gaza. This of course is after many many months of worldwide reporting on the supposed famine, and plenty of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrations as a result. Here’s the latest from the august body, the UN:

A UN committee of experts said in a recently released report that there is “no supporting evidence” to conclude that there is a famine in Gaza.

The 18-page report, released by the United Nations Famine Review Committee on June 4, contradicted an analysis by the US-based Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET)**, which reported in May that northern Gaza was “possibly” already amid famine conditions that would continue to the end of July.

The UN committee’s report said it “does not find the FEWS NET analysis plausible given the uncertainty and lack of convergence of the supporting evidence employed in the analysis. Therefore, the FRC is unable to make a determination as to whether or not famine thresholds have been passed during April.” The UN cited data gaps and questioned FEWS NET’s reliance on “multiple layers of assumptions and inference.”

According to the UN report, “While the use of assumptions and inference is standard practice in [classifying whether a region meets famine thresholds] generally, the limitations of the available body of evidence and the extent of its convergence for northern Gaza in April leads to a very high level of uncertainty regarding the current food security and nutritional status of the population.”

In other words, there’s no evidence that there’s a famine, but since Israel is always guilty till proven otherwise (and often even when proven otherwise), we’ll hedge and say we just don’t have a clue but we can’t disprove it either.

This is the pattern with the UN. Sometimes they actually ultimately clear Israel’s name a bit, but only after the lies have gone not just halfway round the world but around the world many times over and become suitably entrenched in people’s minds. Then on to the next lie, and the next.

I first noticed this pattern with the fake massacre in Jenin in 2002 (see this for my post about it). It was quite instrumental in my political change and my realization of the many lies I had swallowed previously at the hands of the press. So it’s very easy to recognize the same pattern continuing ever since; it has definitely been present post-10/7 whenever the MSM and the left covers and describes Israel’s actions and the extent of Gazan suffering.

I firmly believe that most of those doing the initial reporting on deaths, atrocities, famines, and the like are not fooled by the initial reports coming from Hamas and Gaza and realize there are compelling reasons to doubt them. With the lengthy history of lying from those sources, they should be considered extremely suspicious at this point. I cannot help but conclude that people in the west report them as truth anyway because they want to do so.

And why would they want to support lies in order to harm Israel and increase sympathy for the Gazans and Hamas? Mix and match from the following:

(1) Anti-Semitism.
(2) Virtue-signaling and conformity – one must do this to be in with the current in-crowd.
(3) A subset of #2: proving one isn’t racist, since the Israelis are arbitrarily and erroneously defined as white and the Palestinians as brown. Therefore one must be on the side of the supposed brown people in order to not be a racist.
(4) Post-modern anti-colonist theory, ditto.
(5) Not only is it considered racist to doubt the word of the Palestinians, but even if a pundit knows the Palestinians are almost certainly lying, the lies are accepted through cultural relativism as a valid custom of downtrodden people. The “higher truth” is that the Israelis are bad and the Palestinians good, so lies are acceptable to further that “narrative.”

South Africa: the ANC and the DA made a deal

The New Neo Posted on by

Can it last?

I wrote about the results of the recent South African election in this post. The ANC, which has been in power for thirty years, had lost the majority and was forced into a coalition that had yet to be determined.

It turns out that the coalition formed is between the ANC and the more moderate DA (Democratic Alliance), the party which has been a major rival. The ANC leader and current president Ramphosa has been sworn in and employs some lofty rhetoric:

South Africa has begun a “new era”, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced as he was sworn in for a second full term in office.

He remains in office even though his party, the African National Congress (ANC), failed to secure a majority in parliament during last month’s election.

The ANC subsequently made a deal with its long-time rival Democratic Alliance (DA) and other parties to form a coalition government. …

“Through the ballots that they have cast, the people of South Africa have made plain their expectation that the leaders of our country should work together,” President Ramaphosa, 71, said solemnly.

“They have directed their representatives to put aside animosity and dissent, to abandon narrow interests, and to pursue together only that which benefits the nation.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if such a rarity came to pass?

Great video overview of Biden corruption from Miranda Devine

The New Neo Posted on by

Miranda Devine (literally) wrote the book on Biden corruption, and she was the original reporter of the Hunter laptop. Here she is interviewed by Caroline Glick.

Devine packs a great deal of information into this video, which is well worth watching. My advice – as usual – is that, if you’re impatient like me, click on “settings” and choose a faster speed for the video. I often listen at either 1.5 time or even 1.75 time, sometimes while taking a walk or doing chores around the house and listening through a bluetooth:

How many Democrats do you think are even aware of these allegations? A person wouldn’t know much about them if that person didn’t read or listen to sources on the right, so my guess is that a great many Democrats are ignorant of them and certainly know none of the details or how well-documented they are.