Libs of TikTok experiences the Streisand Effect

The New Neo Posted on by

What’s the Streisand Effect?:

The Streisand effect is a phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of that information, often via the Internet. It is named after American singer Barbra Streisand, whose attempt to suppress the California Coastal Records Project’s photograph of her residence in Malibu, California, taken to document California coastal erosion, inadvertently drew greater attention to the photograph in 2003…

The Streisand effect is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, they are significantly more motivated to access and spread that information.

And so we have Libs of TikTok’s follower increase:

The Libs of TikTok Twitter account is approaching one million followers after Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz exposed her identity in a hit piece…

Libs of TikTok has become wildly popular for simply acting as a mirror for leftist insanity. The account shares videos, tweets and other documents of anything from liberals naming their cat after Dr. Anthony Fauci to sexual content being taught to kindergartners…

The attempt from the Washington Post to silence the account now appears to have backfired spectacularly, as Libs of TikTok has gained over 300,000 followers since the Lorenz hit piece was released. It is now just 60,000 followers short of one million.

Ron Coleman, who is giving legal counsel to the account creator, has aggressively pushed back on falsehoods spread about the account creator in the aftermath of the story. After a fake tweet falsely attributed to Libs of TikTok was circulated by left-wing influencer account, Coleman threatened legal action if it was not removed. The tweet, which falsely accused the creator of defending pedophilia, was promptly deleted by all sizable accounts who had posted it.

Twitter is of course in a state of flux now that it’s been acquired by Elon Musk. Perhaps it will improve, but I’m not counting on it. I don’t use Twitter and seldom read it; I think it’s basically pernicious and have briefly explained why in this previous post.

[NOTE: See also this.]

The story of my left eye – so far: Part II

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I, which dealt with my iridotomies about fifteen or so years ago, can be found here.]

When I left off my story in Part I, about fifteen or so years ago, I’d recently had two iridotomies. The one in the left eye was unusually large and let in extra light, although I got fairly used to it over time. But every now and then I’ve sometimes had eye technicians or eye doctors exclaim on seeing it, “Wow, that’s an incredibly large iridotomy!”

Then about seven years ago I was told I had the faint beginnings of cataracts in both eyes. It wasn’t a problem yet, except that when I looked at the moon at night the image was somewhat doubled. Same with glowing numbers in the dark, such as on my clock-radio. Nothing much to get excited or disturbed about, though.

Then a little later, one day when I’d been to the eye doctor for my annual checkup and come home, I looked in the mirror with my eyes dilated and saw an odd thing about the pupil in my left eye: about a quarter of the pupil’s circumference hadn’t dilated along with the rest. My left pupil looked like someone had taken a noticeable bite out of the circle.

How odd, I thought. That had never happened before. But the eye doctor, who must have seen it, hadn’t mentioned it to me as a cause for concern, so I pretty much forgot about it.

Then one day about four years ago I was in a store dressing room trying on some clothes and suddenly I saw something that looked like a lightning bolt in the outer periphery of my right eye. It kept happening, particularly when I turned my head to the right, and I quickly realized I might be having an eye emergency called a retinal detachment.

My regular eye doctor had retired two years earlier and I hadn’t been to an eye doctor for those two years, but I called the office and they set me up with someone else who had impeccable academic credentials. She saw me pronto, that day, and assured me that it wasn’t a retinal detachment I was experiencing but merely something called a posterior vitreous detachment, quite common in older people and usually innocuous except for an increase in floaters and those lightening flashes for a while.

While there I was asked to read the eye chart before my eyes were dilated. With my right eye I could see as well as ever, which was pretty darn well. But when I closed my right eye and looked with only my left eye, I discovered that I could barely read the top letter on the eye chart. Everything below that first line looked like Chinese characters, and very blurry ones at that.

I was so shocked that I almost fell over. My mouth went dry and my hands went cold. What on earth had happened to me? And I was almost as shocked and upset that I hadn’t even noticed it until that moment; apparently the vision in my right eye had grown almost totally dominant over the left. I managed to tell the eye doctor that in the last two years my left eye had apparently gone from almost 20/20 vision to being almost unable to read the eye chart, and I hadn’t even realized it. Why had that happened? How had that happened? When had that happened?

The doctor didn’t seem to know and what’s more she didn’t seem to care. I asked whether it could have been from my cataract, but she was adamant that my cataract wasn’t bad enough to account for it. Then I asked her another question: what about that area of my pupil that didn’t dilate along with the rest of the pupil? What was that all about? No one had ever explained it.

“Oh, you just have some scar tissue there,” she answered. This was profoundly disturbing to me as well. Scar tissue? How on earth did I get scar tissue? “You must have had some inflammation at some point in the past,” she answered. When I asked how I could have had inflammation serious enough to cause scar tissue and not even realize it, she shrugged again. Our session was over.

I made a mental note to find an eye doctor who was more interested in these things than she seemed to be. The posterior vitreous detachment in my right eye seemed to resolve uneventfully, though, and then about a year later I found myself in another eye doctor’s office for my checkup. This time I was told that the cataract in my left eye was indeed bad enough to have caused my precipitous vision loss. But about the scar tissue no one had a clue. Must have been some inflammation, but for no seeming reason and outside of my awareness, which made no sense to me. But no one seemed to think that the scar tissue represented any particular problem.

By this time I knew I had to have cataract surgery, probably in both eyes. The vision in my right eye had become worse by this time as well, although nowhere near as bad as in my left. I thought maybe I’d have the surgery in the spring, but then COVID hit and elective surgery was out of the question. Meanwhile, both eyes got worse and couldn’t be corrected much if at all with eyeglasses. I started having more trouble driving, reading street or traffic signs, finding things in the supermarket, and even some difficulty on the computer although my near vision continued to be rather good in my left eye, which was so much worse at distance vision than my right. The only plus – if you can call it that – was that the halos around street lights were very beautiful, like enormous crystalline snowflake patterns made of hundreds of tiny diamond shapes, with each of the tiny diamond shapes having borders in the form of tiny rainbows.

Because of COVID I waited until the summer of 2021 and then went to the best cataract surgeon in my local area. He did a workup and said that sure, he’d do my cataract surgery. But my case would be more difficult than the typical one because of the scar tissue.

No eye doctor had ever mentioned this as a potential problem before; they’d all acted as though the scar tissue was a small and unimportant feature of my left eye. But this doctor was saying that the adhesions I had that were stopping the pupil in my left eye from fully dilating – adhesions which are called posterior synechiae – meant that my lens in that eye was somewhat stuck to my iris. And it’s the lens the surgeon must remove when cataract surgery is performed.

I asked him whether this scar tissue was from my iridotomy (I had looked online and read that scar tissue was more common in people who had previously had iridotomies). He said no, certainly not.

“Your cataract removal will take a little longer than usual,” he told me. “And your recovery will take longer, too.” Again, I felt an increase in fear.

I asked him whether he had seen this sort of thing in patients before. “Oh, sure,” he said. I asked him how often. “One or two times a year,” he answered.

One or two a year didn’t sound like very often to me. This condition was obviously not very common, and at that moment I resolved to go to Mass Eye and Ear in Boston, one of the most famous and highly respected eye hospitals in the country, for a second opinion and surgery there.

Unfortunately – partly because of backup from all the postponed surgery because of COVID – I had to wait six months for that appointment, which was this past January. The appointment was with a doctor there who specialized in complex cataract surgery rather than run-of-the-mill situations. I had great confidence that he would tell me that he was experienced at this sort of thing and that despite the difficulties of my case he had full confidence that my surgery would be successful.

When the day of my appointment at Mass Eye and Ear came, my workup with technician after technician was long. But I felt that at last I’d come to the right place. Then in came the doctor – actually, two of them. They examined me briefly and then spent some time softly discussing my case right in front of me, although not yet addressing me. Something in their tones made me feel uneasy, although I couldn’t understand exactly what they were saying.

Then my doctor turned to me and said, “Your case is a very difficult one and your surgery will be very hard to do. There’s a very good chance it won’t succeed.”

This was not what I had expected to hear and certainly not what I wanted to hear. I felt suddenly sick to my stomach as well as shaky.

[To be continued in Part III…]

Why care about Ukraine?

The New Neo Posted on by

About a month ago, commenter “BrianB” had this to say. I think it represents one not uncommon point of view on the right:

On the personal and emotional level I sympathize with Ukraine. But personal emotions are how our “leaders” manipulate us and they are nothing to base a foreign policy on.

For 30 years we have had “leaders” of both parties jerking us one way then another over humanitarian and democratic appeals for why we should spend trillions and kill thousands and all it has done is spend trillions and kill thousands for no purpose other than to strengthen our “leaders” and weaken the US.

Russia is corrupt and concerned with its near abroad and is no particular threat to me. Ukraine is corrupt and is also no threat to me.

The Dems and and the GOPe and the progs and the globalists and Soros and Schwab are all mortal and immediate threats to me and America. Realpolitik is cold blooded but we have seen what sentimentality and nation building has gotten us so which school is truly cold blooded?

The question realpolitik demands is what is in our, America’s, interests; a sentimental, underdog Ukraine win or a Russian one? A Ukraine win strengthens our true enemies and will launch them on ever more meddling and nation building and adventurism. It also strengthens them politically at home. A Russian win damages the neocon/neolib/globalist project.

I believe this view is incorrect, although somewhat understandable.

As Russia takes on more territory – Ukraine in particular, with all its resources – it acquires more sources of income and more influence. Russia also has made Europe dependent on it, and that’s worrisome and has (until the recent war, anyway) greatly affected Europe’s decisions on foreign policy and trade. That and Russia’s alliances with China and other third-world countries have the goal of creating a countervailing power to the West. They’re playing for big stakes (the article is from a few weeks before the Ukraine invasion):

The two leading authoritarians of our time have declared unprecedented common cause, perhaps even a de facto security alliance, with aspirations of shaping a new world order to replace the one fashioned by the United States and its partners after World War II.

So, they publicly released the entirety of their audacious, 5,300-word joint statement in English this weekend, declaring that “a trend has emerged towards redistribution of power in the world” – namely toward them and away from the U.S. and its democratic partners and allies.

There’s a lot in the statement worth reading and digesting, but here’s my rough executive summary: Russia and China are throwing in their lot in a gesture of cooperation that exceeds even Stalin’s partnership with Mao, in each other’s regions and around the world. For the first time, Beijing has joined Moscow in opposing NATO enlargement and embracing Putin’s vision for a new European security order. Russia returned the favor by opposing the new Australia-U.S.-U.K. security agreement, endorsing its One China Policy, embracing the Russia-India-China cooperation format, and blessing its Arctic role.

In addition, there is evidence that Putin has been influenced by the work of Aleksandr Dugin, something I wrote about in this previous post. Here’s an excerpt in which I quoted this article:

Dugin gave Putin the ideology he needed to reject the tainted European strain of Soviet communism while rehabilitating it as a great patriotic people’s movement, including the rehabilitation of Stalin in his role as wartime champion against Hitler. This ideology also enabled Putin to make what is to him a coherent argument that, while the Soviet communist regime will never be restored, the Slavophilic populism that was its true lifeblood can be—a national tribalism extending to all Slavic peoples including Ukraine, Poland, and the Balkans, who must be gathered back into the Russian fold.

And here’s a description of a book on Dugin’s philosophy, written in 2014:

A new ideology—Eurasianism—is being advanced by those who dream of a new empire and revenge on the Western powers which brought about the collapse of the Soviet empire. Aleksandr Dugin, the father of Eurasianism, was recently described by Foreign Affairs as “Putin’s Brain.” For Dugin, the battle between Russia and the West is an epic struggle to fulfill ancient myths: a battle between the mystical forces of the mythical land of ‘Arctogaia’ and a decadent, materialistic America. “The American Empire should be destroyed,” Dugin declares, “And at one point, it will be.”

Russia’s performance in Ukraine so far doesn’t make achievement of this goal seem likely through military means. But it still appears to be a goal – and Russia has been more successful in undermining the US and the West through non-military strategies. BrianB expresses the idea that “A Russian win damages the neocon/neolib/globalist project,” but I disagree. Russia wants the West to be as weak as possible, and it sees that so-called “neocon/neolib/globalist project” as a mechanism further encouraging Western weakness. To that purpose, Russia has encouraged some aspects of it rather than discouraging it – but only for the West, not for Russia. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that a Russian victory in Ukraine would reduce that strategy; rather, there is every reason to believe Russia would continue it.

To take one example, Russia has been instrumental in spreading and supporting climate change and Green propaganda in the US, in particular opposition to fracking and drilling for fossil fuels in this country:

In 2014 – the same year Russia annexed Crimea – then-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned that Russia was covertly working to undermine European and U.S. fossil fuel production.

Three years later, in 2017, Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Randy Weber (R-Texas) sent a lengthy letter to then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin making a similar accusation. Importantly, their letter connected some of the dots highlighting Russia’s covert efforts to fund various environmental organizations that were trying to limit or end U.S. hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for shale gas and oil…

In 2014 – the same year Russia annexed Crimea – then-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned that Russia was covertly working to undermine European and U.S. fossil fuel production.

Three years later, in 2017, Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Randy Weber (R-Texas) sent a lengthy letter to then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin making a similar accusation. Importantly, their letter connected some of the dots highlighting Russia’s covert efforts to fund various environmental organizations that were trying to limit or end U.S. hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for shale gas and oil.

The media and Democrats mostly shrugged their collective shoulders at these allegations. They were far too busy trying to prove the now-discredited Russian-Trump election collusion to be bothered with a more plausible Russian-environmental activist collusion….

In hindsight, it is increasingly apparent that Putin has been preparing for his Ukrainian invasion for years. Dominating the global energy market by covertly working to limit U.S. production would have been a huge coup — in more ways than one.

So it seems to me to be a good idea to rethink that business about who a Russian win benefits and who it hurts. The Russian interest is in sowing chaos and division in the US through propaganda, and handicapping our economy (especially in the energy field but also in every respect), and I think it can count some successes there.

In addition, there is the more general principle of not looking the other way when an imperialistic country invades another country with the purpose of annexing all or part of it, such as Russia did with Ukraine. If successful, Putin would not be likely to stop at Ukraine. The only thing that will stop him from going forward into other countries is exhaustion and depletion of military resources, and that depletion can only occur if we continue to help Ukraine by supplying armaments to fight Russia. What’s more, a Russian victory in Ukraine might embolden other countries to do the same around the world. Does anyone think that wouldn’t affect the US, at least economically, and probably in many other ways?

On Ukraine: what course others may take

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter Bauxite wrote:

Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine is a disaster…

There were no good outcomes for the Ukraine once Putin invaded. Once the invasion happened, all of the options that included a Ukrainian victory involved considerable death, destruction, and human suffering for Ukrainians. The options that included a Russian victory involved differing levels of death, destruction, and human suffering along with either the end of Ukrainian sovereiegnty or a significant reduction in Ukrainaian sovereignty.

Given that, it is perfectly reasonable to ask whether different policy choices by the western powers over the 30 years or so since the breakup of the Soviet Union led to the current situation or whether different policies might have avoided it. This is especially the case given the links between US and Ukrainian elites over the past few decades, especially among our administrative class. Did the US politicians and bureaucrats like Nuland, Vindman, and Hill lead western-oriented Ukranians down the primrose path to disaster by making them think that NATO would support them or that the Ukraine would eventually join NATO? Asking that question is not being a “mouthpiece for Putin.” Asking whether the US or other western powers might have avoided the current terrible situation with different policy choices is not acting as “Putin’s press office.”

I agree with much of this – certainly the “disaster” part. But not all of it.

Commenter Art Deco wrote in response:

“Given that, it is perfectly reasonable to ask whether different policy choices by the western powers over the 30 years or so since the breakup of the Soviet Union led to the current situation or whether different policies might have avoided it.”

No it isn’t.

Rather minimal.

Commenter “Bauxite” replied:

“No it isn’t.”

Sure. When a bad thing happen[s], one should never ask why and never consider whether one’s own choices may have contributed to the bad thing. That might cause one to discover out that he or she is not omnisicent. We couldn’t have that.

Art Deco’s answer:

Let go of my leg. That’s the go to narrative of topical commentary, magazine journalism, snap books, and academic literature whenever there is some conflict having vaguely to do with the United States.

In this case, it’s preposterous.

But, as commenter Barry Meislin writes:

The real question is, what is a true reason?; and what is a useful excuse?

However, when one is dealing with either paranoiacs or thugs (or paranoiac thugs—thuggish paranoiacs?), the differences collapse on themselves and all bets are off. IOW, it really doesn’t matter.

In such cases, it only matters whether one has the power to withstand the aggression…and whether one is prepared/willing to use it.

Sometimes people get confused about the assignment of responsibility for some bad result. For example, I don’t go out walking at night in a high-crime area. But if I did, and if I were to become the victim of a crime there, the person who committed that crime is 100% responsible. I bear no responsibility at all. No one forced him (it would probably be a “him”) to break the law and attack or rob me. The fact that my decision could be considered somewhat risky and not all that smart has nothing to do with the fact that he has total responsibility for his own crime and I have none. The fact that the crime would not have been committed – at least, not on me – had I not gone walking there that evening is utterly irrelevant to the apportionment of responsibility.

Putin’s history is that of an aggressor and of a corrupt tyrant who murders his opponents. He has spoken at great length of his desire to reclaim the empire Russia once had, after the fall of the Soviet Union led to what he considers to be a terrible disaster: Russia losing what used to be called by some in the west its “captive nations.” Putin aims to capture quite a few of them again, whether they like it or not.

It probably was not inevitable that Putin invaded at exactly this time – for example, I think he would not have invaded now if Trump had continued to be president. Putin was almost undoubtedly waiting for the right opportunity, and the Biden administration’s weakness plus Europe’s dependence on Russian fuel offered him a golden one. But short of Ukraine’s, NATO’s, and the US’s appeasement of and surrender to most or all of Putin’s unreasonable wishes and demands before the war ever began (and/or of their being so strong as to convince Putin to postpone the invasion until a weaker administration presented itself), in my opinion nothing would have stopped him.

But the arguments in the US continue unabated. In line with this, it’s instructive to look at this interview with Walter Russell Mead, who is talking here about historical strains in US foreign policy:

Q: And it’s the case that if one doesn’t look back to history, one tends to see each case — Kosovo, the debate over NAFTA, relations with China — as a distinct, discr[ete] case study with no overarching view of what it says about our past or how it relates to our past and what it might say about our future.

A: Yes. For example, in the revolutions of 1848 in Europe, the Hungarians threw off the Austrian yoke, but the Russians came in and crushed them. The leader of the Hungarian resistance, Kossuth, came to America. His tour of American was an amazing event. Thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands turned up. There was a demand that the President of the United States receive him. People wanted the United States to do something about the crushing of the Hungarian freedom movement and, in general, the crushing of the democratic revolutions of 1848. We actually did send the navy to Rome, where the papal forces had crushed the republican forces in Rome. And we provided political asylum for the refugees of 1848. So we did end up intervening a little bit. But to listen to the Bosnia/Kosovo debate, you would never have thought — and believe me, the 1848 event was not an isolated event, either, in American history — you never would have thought that these debates over humanitarian interventions are something that go back to the eighteenth century in the United States. And that, in general, the forces and the arguments that advocate and resist these interventions tend not to change all that much over time.

That’s about the US. For Ukraine itself, this speech is the way the defenders of the country probably feel in facing Russian aggression:

Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on…In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free…we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a [Russian] guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power…Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery!…

…Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun!…What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

The Ukrainians are familiar with the Russian yoke, thank you very much, and the vast majority don’t want any part of it.

Reports are that Musk will be acquiring Twitter after all

The New Neo Posted on by

Fancy that.

Glenn Reynolds writes: “Twitter has been destructive for the left, but it has also been destructive for the nation. I hope Musk can fix the latter, at least.”

I have written about my own detestation of Twitter quite a few times. Twitter may be a cesspool, but at least let it be a cesspool that doesn’t favor the messages of the left and censor the right.

The trouble with Russian armaments

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems pretty apparent from the Ukraine war that Russia has a problem with its military equipment. This article summarizes some of the reasons, among them [emphasis added]:

–Russia should theoretically have military equipment better than anyone but the U.S.

–One reason they don’t: Attempted capitalism without privately owned arms companies.

–“The Soviet military industry was full of unprofitable State enterprises, obsolete factories and, above all, a great deal of corruption.”

–The U.S. bids out contracts. The Soviets depended on state monopolies.

–“Russia has never embraced free market capitalism.”

“According to Vladimir Putin, the problem with communism was not the centralized economy but an economy based on ideological principles. In other words, if you want to improve the efficiency of the system, it is enough to change the managers and put technocrats in charge. Technocrats who have been forged in the bosom of the KGB and who have a pragmatic mentality, totally free of the romanticism of communism or any other ideology. This type of person has a name: “SILOVIKI”. And so, just what was Putin’s formula for bringing his military industry into the 21st century? Very simple: To put Silovikis in all managerial positions. This is how Rostec was conceived in 2007, a conglomerate of companies designed to be the great umbrella of Russian defense. Under this umbrella are more than 700 armaments companies: all of them State-owned.“

Nevertheless, Russia may have enough functioning armaments to take over portions of Ukraine. They certainly have enough to inflict terrible damage.

Macron wins re-election in France

The New Neo Posted on by

In a victory that was not a surprise, Macron defeats Marine Le Pen:

Macron’s victory over Le Pen—with 58.2% of the vote to her 41.8%, according to estimated results released at 8 p.m. local time after polls closed—was significantly smaller than the two politicians’ last face-off in 2017. Back then, 39-year-old Macron shot to power as an outsider, with a 32-point lead over Le Pen, by promising to modernize what he called a sclerotic, over-regulated country…

Macron, 44…is the first French leader in 20 years to win reelection—since 2002, when then-president Jacques Chirac won against Le Pen’s rabidly anti-immigrant father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who faced a wall of opposition that blocked his path to power.

Macron managed that despite barely campaigning for months, preferring instead to play the global statesman in the buildup to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Then over just a few weeks, Macron sprinted across France, warning voters that a Le Pen presidency would ravage their cherished humanist principles, and render the 27-country E.U. untenable…

Yet even so, his shrunken margin of 16.4% of victory signals the fraught political divide he now faces…

Le Pen made it clear her party would immediately begin campaigning for parliamentary seats. “Our historic score puts our camp in an excellent position,” she said in her concession speech Sunday night.

Not only that, but here’s a very familiar divide:

The economic inequality translated into a deep political divide in the election, with about 71% of professional voters choosing Macron, and 69% of working-class voters picking Le Pen, according to the polling company Elabe on Sunday night…

…[M]ore than half the voters in the election’s first round on April 10 chose, among 12 candidates, far-right or far-left politicians— a reflection of widespread anxiety and discontent with mainstream politics. “There is a sense of decline,” Nicolas Becuwe, senior director of Kantar Public in Brussels, said on Thursday, during an online presentation of the polling company’s data across the E.U. “France is the most pessimistic country in all of Europe.”

One problem for Le Pen in this election – and an especially ill-timed one, at that – is that she has long been Putin-friendly and is in favor of France’s withdrawing from NATO. Also, turnout was rather low, with many people not liking either candidate. Macron may have won by a wide margin, but he’s not beloved:

…Macron remains a deeply unpopular figure among a large proportion of the population…

…Euronews takes a look at some of the challenges ahead.

Five of them are listed in the article, including this one:

Macron may face a backlash, despite his victory…

The first round of the presidential election confirmed three newly entrenched blocs in France’s new political landscape: Macron’s pro-European centrists, Le Pen’s nationalist insurgency, and Mélenchon’s hard left.

Broadly, each has the backing of around a third of the public…

France is a very divided nation despite the decisive results in this particular election.

The story of my left eye – so far: Part I

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I’ve decided to write an explanatory piece about my recent eye problems and surgery. It may be long and boring to some, but I think it might be helpful if anyone is going through a similarly confusing time with the medical profession. This is the first of several planned parts.]

I had good vision as a child and young adult, and it persisted through much of my life. I wore distance glasses for only two things: to see subtitles in the movies, and to drive at night. And I didn’t even really need them for either of those tasks, although they helped. I could also usually make do without reading glasses except for small print in low light.

But about twenty years ago I went for my annual visit to the eye doctor and as the technician was looking at my eyes he suddenly said, “Excuse me; I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I had no idea what was going on, but his abrupt departure made me uneasy.

He returned ten or fifteen minutes later with the eye doctor, who peered into my eyes for a while with some instruments, and then told me I would need laser surgery for something called “narrow angles.” My eye structure was such that the drainage system was now potentially compromised, something that happened more commonly in Asian people. I’m not Asian, but I had it anyway, and he told me that meant I could suddenly go blind in a matter of hours after getting the first symptoms, which would be eye pain. It could happen any time, any place, and I had to be near a hospital because I would need emergency surgery in the event of an attack of what’s known as narrow angle glaucoma (not to be confused with the more common sort of glaucoma, which is a different thing with a different cause).

He said that the laser surgery would be very simple, so simple that it really didn’t qualify as “surgery.” It was done in the office and took a minute or two. The procedure was called an iridotomy, with the laser putting a small hole in the patient’s iris so that the fluid would drain if there was an attack and the pressure would never build to damaging proportions. Complications were so rare as to be nonexistent. In one in a million people, the tiny hole in the iris let in light that the retina could perceive as an extra little gleam in the visual field. But that just about never happened.

The whole thing scared me, and I wanted to wait a while and think about it. If I waited, he said, I would have to avoid having my eyes dilated. That could precipitate an attack. I would have to avoid suddenly going into a very dark room – that could precipitate an attack. I would have to avoid taking the following medications – and he proceeded to hand me a very long list.

It was sobering, even though I felt like a wimp for being afraid. My vision was so good that it was hard to accept that I needed eye surgery, even a minor one. But after a year or so and a consultation with another eye doctor who told me I had very narrow angles and really needed the surgery, I decided to do it. The doctor wanted to do both eyes at once, but I insisted on one at a time.

The day came, and the surgery was an odd experience but not such a terrible one. They lasered my left eye first. Afterwards my vision was unclear because they put some sort of sticky substance into the eye, but after a few hours it cleared.

Except for the new light in my eye.

My iridotomy hole was at two o’clock in my vision and the light was at eight o’clock, reflecting the flipping of images by the retina. I was panicked and distressed, and went back to the doctor who had done the iridotomy. He was almost as upset as I was; maybe even more so. He said it was the first time this had ever happened in an iridotomy he’d done. He also said that my iridotomy opening was very large because when he used the laser my iris “split like a broken zipper.” Ugh. He told me, though, that over time the brain adjusts and the extra light becomes much less disturbing.

And that’s what happened. After a few months, I often didn’t even notice it, although at times it became quite annoying again depending on light conditions. But now I faced having the other eye done. This time I went to a fancy eye clinic in Boston, and the doctor used a different technique for the iridotomy on the right eye. Fortunately, no broken zipper and no extra light in that eye.

And that’s the way it remained for many years.

[To be continued….]

[NOTE: Part II can be found here.]