The skills of a cult leader

When we think of cult leaders, we tend to think of those with large followings. But that same kind of phenomenon can occur with smaller numbers, even within households, because the kinds of skills used by a cult leader to control others can be seen in abusive relationships where the abused person seems unable to escape from the clutches of the abusers, even though on the surface they seem to have the ability to walk away. The abuser seems to know exactly what buttons to push with each captive, which combination of threats and affection work to keep them from leaving.

I was struck by the case of Larry Ray who has just been sentenced to 60 years in prison for trafficking. It starts with his daughter Talia asking her seven dorm roommates at Sarah Lawrence College if her father, who had just been released from prison, could stay in their dorm for a short while and they agreed.
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The Santos lies keep coming

According to Politico:

Embattled Rep. George Santos has claimed that reports and videos documenting him performing in drag are both “outrageous” and “categorically false.”

But nearly a dozen years ago, Santos himself appears to have confirmed that he participated in drag shows while he was a teenager living in Brazil.

A Wikipedia page accessed by POLITICO shows a user named Anthony Devolder — a Santos alias — writing that he “startted [sp] his ‘stage’ life at age 17 as an gay night club [sp] DRAG QUEEN and with that won sevral [sp] GAY ‘BEAUTY PAGENTS [sp].’”

That he may have once been a drag queen is not nor should be an issue. However, I will be skeptical that he actually won beauty pageants until he provides proof, because he seems to have a penchant for exaggerating his accomplishments, such as claiming that he was a volleyball star at Baruch College when they won a championship, when he did not even attend that institution. He seems to be incapable of making up simple lies, he seems compelled to adorn them with further grandiosities.
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David Crosby (1941-2023)

The musician died yesterday at the age of 81. He was a member of the hit group The Byrds and later formed the foursome Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young with Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young, that produced good music despite being highly dysfunctional, to put it mildly. The smoothness of their harmonies in music stood in stark contrast to the the disharmonies in their personal relationships, with the group forming and breaking up, over and over again.

Crosby joined the Byrds in 1964, but was dismissed from the band three years later. In 2019 documentary Remember My Name, Byrds member Roger McGuinn described Crosby and his on-stage political rants as “insufferable”, with fellow band member Chris Hillman saying he had a superiority complex.

In 1968, Crosby met Stephen Stills and the pair started jamming together. They were soon joined by Graham Nash to form Crosby, Stills & Nash, selling millions of copies of their first two albums: their self-titled debut in 1969, and – joined by Neil Young – Déjà Vu the following year.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young disbanded in 2016 after years of rivalry and tension. In a 2021 interview with the Guardian, Crosby described Graham Nash as “definitely my enemy” and Neil Young as “the most self-centred, self-obsessed, selfish person I know”.
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In a tribute shared on Twitter by music journalist Rob Tannenbaum, Crosby’s former bandmate Graham Nash wrote of his “profound sadness” to hear the news.

“I know people tend to focus on how volatile our relationship has been at times, but what has always mattered to David and me more than anything was the pure joy of the music we created together,” Nash wrote. “He leaves behind a tremendous void.”

You can read about all the vicious infighting that went on in gruesome detail. It is amazing that they were able to produce any music at all.

Here is my favorite song Teach Your Children of the CSNY group, though minus Young in this live performance in 2000 on Dave Letterman’s show.

Public libraries survive despite threats

I love libraries. They are truly egalitarian spaces that are open to everyone and enables anyone free access to information, be it in the form of books, newspapers, magazines, or the internet. I have never met a librarian who did not seem genuinely pleased to be asked to help me find out something or seek out a resource. They are welcoming spaces. The Peterborough Town Library in New Hampshire, established in 1833, is reported to be the first documented free, public library in the world, though claims of being the ‘first’ for anything are always ripe for challenge.

One thing to note is that the modern library is far more than a repository for books. It also provides classes, workshops, internet access, resume and tax help, and serves as a meeting space for community events, as community gathering places, and so forth
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Harvard reverses rejection of Israel critic

Kenneth Roth, the outgoing heard of Human Rights Watch, was offered a fellowship by Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy school of government but that offer was vetoed by the school’s dean Doug Elmendorf for what became clear was uneasiness with Roth’s role in HRW’s criticisms of Israel’s human rights record, which included a scathing report that accused Israel of practicing a form of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories. It joined an Amnesty International report that described Israel’s policies in those same terms. That apartheid description has become widely accepted but is opposed by the Israel lobby in the US.
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Media obsession with the British monarchy

I suspect many readers of this blog are as wearied as I am from being bombarded with news headlines about the the Windsor family’s internal fights. It seems like it never ends.

This 11-year-old clip from the Australian sketch comedy team The Chasers pokes well-deserved ridicule at the media’s obsession with the most trivial details about that annoying family. And that was long before the current media binge about whatever the hell is the latest topic in this long-running soap opera.

A puzzling feature of Tesla stock

Today in San Francisco, Elon Musk went on trial because he has been sued by some Tesla shareholders over this Tweet he sent out on August 7, 2017.

This Tweet that he was planning to take Tesla private by purchasing all the shares at $420 and that he had secured the funding to do so caused the stock price to rise sharply but the deal did not materialize and the stock price plunged a week later when it appeared that he did not have the funding deal.
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What is empty space?

We may think that it is easy to imagine empty space. We look around us and remove every item that we can see and that leaves us with empty space. We tend to treat empty space as a cavity of some kind, some region from which all matter and radiation has been removed. And that is fine as long as matter and/or radiation exists in some other part of the universe, so that we can envisage the space between things. But what if there was no matter or radiation anywhere in the universe? Would space still exist?

Albert Einstein in a letter to Karl Schwarzschild on 9 January, 1916 said no.
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Gina Lollobrigida (1927-2023)

The Italian film star has died at the age of 95. She was stunningly beautiful and was constantly being pursued by men including her co-stars. I am sure that I am not the only one of my generation who would go to see her films just to see her.

Mostly famously, rich recluse Howard Hughes, based on some photos that he had seen of her, tried everything in his power to try and persuade her to divorce her husband and marry him, including asking her to come to the US for a screen test.
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