The redemption of Jar Jar Binks

Since I had enjoyed the original three Star Wars films (Episodes 4, 5, 6) that came out in the 1977, 1980, and 1983, I went to see the first of the three prequels (Episode 1) when it was released in 1999. I found it to be a waste of time so that I did not watch Episodes 2 and 3 either.

One of the really off-putting features of Episode 1 was the exceedingly annoying character Jar Jar Binks. My dislike for the character was shared by many who mounted a hate campaign against him. Since I thought that he was a purely CGI animation, I did not pay much attention to this campaign. But it turns out that behind the mask was a real actor Ahmed Best, who had been a huge fan of the films and was overjoyed to be selected to be part of the franchise. But his life was made such hell by the vitriol and even death threats aimed at him that he seriously contemplated suicide. The idea that one would not just intensely dislike a fictional character but go after the hapless actor playing that role amazes me. Mind you, this was even before the current social media environment made such pile ons easier. Thankfully he did not carry out that plan to kill himself and has managed to make a comeback as a new character in The Mandalorian

This article tells his story.

Extra-terrestrials are obviously English speakers

Given all the depressing news in the world right now, it is refreshing to read about things that are really silly but taken seriously by people who should know better, like the members of Congress. I am referring of course to the hearings on so-called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). On the surface is nothing remarkable about things in the sky that we have not as yet identified. But they have become identified in the minds of true believers with visitations by extra-terrestrials. Furthermore these people are convinced that the US government knows about these things but is hiding it from us.
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Weird Musk’s weird obsession with X

Twitter owner Elon Musk has abruptly renamed the company as simply X. He had earlier named his first company X.com. Jill Lepore writes that Musk has long had a fascination with this particular letter, that can be traced back to his father and grandfather who were leaders of a so-called Technocracy movement and called themselves Technocrats and “believed that only engineers and scientists could save the world from a looming catastrophe.”

Technocrats objected to politicians and economists, democracy, and socialism. They wanted an end to all banks. In the future that Technocrats including Musk’s grandfather were planning for,“There will be no place for Politics or Politicians, Finance or Financiers, Rackets or Racketeers. There would also be no place for personal names. One technocrat, for instance, renamed himself 1x1809x56. Musk named one of his sons X Æ A-12—X, for short.

Why name a baby X Æ A-12, something that is going to result in the child being tormented by their peers and likely require years of therapy as an adult? This whole business of parents trying to give their children weird names to make some ideological point seems to be sheer vanity, seeing the child as a vehicle for their own obsessions and ignoring their needs. I am really glad that my parents gave me an utterly common name. As least it is common in Sri Lanka though, because it is simple enough, it is only a little exotic now that I am in the US.

But Musk has big plans for the company that he now has renamed X, seeing it as the precursor to an ‘everything app’, whatever the hell that is.

X, Musk promises, will be the “everything app.” X is the Technocrats’ dream deferred, a way to engineer society, the economy, and politics. Extreme capitalism—Muskism—as the answer to existential risk. With any luck, it will be a disaster.

I hope so too.

I saw this coming way off

As soon as I saw the sad news story that Tafari Campbell, the personal chef of the Obamas, had drowned last Sunday while swimming near Martha’s Vineyard, I knew that conspiracy mongers would seize upon it, since any tragic event connected to the Obamas or Clintons is like catnip to them. And sure enough, they have.

The death of Tafari Campbell, a Barack Obama employee whose body was recovered near the former president’s home on Martha’s Vineyard on Monday, has sparked a wave of entirely unverified conspiracy theories online.

A number of prominent right-wing accounts, some with hundreds of thousands of followers, have questioned the official version of events. One described Campbell’s death on the Massachusetts island as “strange” and asked “what do you think really happened?”
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Liz Crokin is a Trump supporter and advocate of the QAnon conspiracy theory that says America is secretly being run by a cabal of satanic child molesters. She asked, “what did he know?” referring to Campbell.
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The Carrie loves America Twitter account, which has 102,000 followers and a picture of Trump as its headed image, wrote: “Tafari Campbell isn’t the only person who has died inexplicably in Obama’s orbit.

“Did you know that the woman who verified the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate, Loretta Fuddy, was the only person to die in a plane crash in Hawaii in 2013. Everyone else survived,” the Carrie loves America account added.

Fuddy was responsible for approving the release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate in 2011. In December 2013, the 65-year-old was the only fatality when a light aircraft crashed off the coast of Hawaii, which an investigation attributed to “catastrophic engine failure.”

The Fuddy story illustrates the weird logic of these people The fact she was the only person who died in the crash is seen as the clue to it being suspicious. Somehow we are asked to think that the people who wanted to kill her and engineered the plane crash were able to arrange it so as to make just one person die. Surely it would have been easier to kill them all or, if they had some scruples about doing that, to just kill her on land in a car accident or something, rather than this far more complicated plan? But it is the convoluted nature of the plans that is appealing to conspiracists. Something that is straightforward is simply no fun for them.

Green flash

I have never seen the so-called ‘green flash’, the brief appearance of green light just as the sun sets over the horizon. It requires special conditions for it it occur and although those conditions are not that rare, your chance of being in the right place for those few seconds is low. Fortunately with cameras, you can now capture the green (and even more occasionally blue and red) flashes as can be seen in this video compilation by Dutch filmmaker, photographer and artist Michiel de Boer.

The need to balance fear with hope

When I need to learn how to do something around the house or with the computer, I will go to the internet and will frequently find a video on YouTube that gives instructions on what to do and those are usually helpful. But I only do this for things that are relatively minor. I can tell when I am getting out of my depth and need to call in a real expert.

But the easy availability of self-help videos can mislead us into thinking that that is sufficient even for major tasks and lead to tragic consequences, when people think that they can use that information for life-changing decisions. This is apparently what happened to three people who died in the wilderness of Colorado in their attempt to live off the grid.
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Big win for UPS workers and unions

The Teamsters union that represents UPS workers yesterday came to a tentative deal with the company. Although the deal still has to be ratified by the members, that appears to be a formality because it looks like a big win for the 340,000 workers in the company, one of the largest workforces in the country. This new contract replaces a despised one that was forced on the workers five years by the former union president James Hoffa. A subsequent revolt by workers forced Hoffa out and replaced him with Sean M. O’Brien who negotiated the new deal. The deal resulted in many of the things that the union had demanded being agreed to by company management.
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Religious people can be so touchy

Some Hindu groups in India are up in arms about a scene in the new film Oppenheimer, a biopic about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the Manhattan project that developed the first atomic bomb in the top secret laboratory created just for that purpose in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Oppenheimer was a very cerebral person who taught himself Sanskrit and was fond of the classic work the Bhagavad Gita that is considered one of the holy scriptures of Hinduism. He said in a later interview that when he witnessed the first explosion of the bomb at the Trinity test site in the New Mexico desert and saw its explosive power, these words from the book “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” came to his mind. Here is a more complete quote from the interview of the reactions of the observers as they witnessed the mushroom cloud:
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The ‘No Labels’ charade

One of the enduring pieces of conventional wisdom in American political punditry is that voters want politicians to work together for the common good. While appealing in principle, it is premised on the idea that there are policies that both sides can agree on or that there is a commitment to following the norms of governing that enables compromise policies to be enacted without too much acrimony.

Whether that ideal ever existed is up for debate but it is clear that we are not living in such a time now. We are at a point where it is clear that Republicans have decided to adopt a scorched Earth policy where anything and everything will be thrown into battle to achieve their goals, including attempts to undermine the legitimacy of elections, even to the extent of seeking a forcible overthrow of election results that they do not agree with.

Such a climate is conducive to the growth of third parties that claim to be above the fray and thus hope to appeal to those voters who say they are fed up with the squabbling of the two major parties. And sure enough, we have the appearance of the group known as No Labels that claims to represent this supposed large bloc of voters.
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The slipperiness of conspiratorial rabbit holes

A supporter of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) who was also an avid consumer of Fox News is suing the media company saying that he was defamed by Tucker Carlson.

Fox News was hit with a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday by Trump supporter Ray Epps after former host Tucker Carlson repeatedly called Epps an undercover FBI agent who orchestrated the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

Carlson said Epps, an Arizona resident and former marine, “helped stage-manage the insurrection” – a conspiracy he broadcast in nearly 20 episodes.

Carlson also told viewers that Epps was recorded urging the mob to enter the Capitol building, but that he never entered himself.
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Epps claims he and his wife, Robyn, have received death threats and that their lives were ruined because of Carlson’s conspiracies.

The lawsuit reads: “As Fox recently learned in its litigation against Dominion Voting Systems, its lies have consequences.”

The lawsuit describes Epps as a “loyal Fox viewer and Trump supporter” and rejeted [sic] the notion he was a federal agent.
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Legal experts noted earlier this week that while Epps will have to prove that Carlson’s claims damaged his reputation, he presents a strong argument and therefore probably has standing.

David D Lin of the Lewis & Lin LLC law firm said he believed “there is a lot of potential risk here to Fox and they need to take the claims very seriously,” before adding that Carlson could be personally liable if the suit included him.

Epps could face charges himself for his role in the January 6 insurrection. He was questioned by the House January 6 committee, though a criminal investigation is still ongoing.

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