March 2, 2025

UNCLE SUGAR’S CHECKBOOK IS CLOSED, BUT THEY’RE TOO POOR TO TAKE HIS PLACE:

The richest European countries are poorer than Mississippi, though they all look down on Mississippi.

Posted at 9:04 am by Glenn Reynolds 64

IT TOOK LONG ENOUGH: Hidden behind paywall, but The WSJ has an interesting article about reintroducing shop class in schools. IIRC, Glenn and others have mentioned that most Gen-X and Z’ers don’t even know how to change a tire.

I was at an AutoZone recently to replace an oil filter wrench. The kid gave me the “deer in the headlights” look, and just went to his checkout computer screen to see what I was talking about.

“Have you ever changed oil in a car?” I asked.
You get three guesses at what his response was, and the first two guesses don’t count.

Posted at 8:41 am by Charles Glasser 138

IT CHRONICLES WHAT HAPPENED IN 1972 — But September 5 Is About Our Social Media Present.

When the full extent of the resources needed to shoot that 160-page script became clear, Fehlbaum, Binder and the producers slipped into a funk. Who would give them the money for a project that big? And there was no plausible way to make it smaller. It all seemed like the end, games over, medal unclaimed.

But they hadn’t counted on the man known as Mase.

Geoffrey Mason, as he is more formally known, was not the kind of person who was going to make Swiss auteur dreams come true. Heck, he wasn’t even the kind of person who knew any Swiss auteurs. Mason, now 83, spends his days working as a sports producer from his home in Naples, Florida. He had been a young television producer that 1972 day, just past his 30th birthday, manning the ABC Sports control room for what was supposed to be a competition-lite 24 hours. He liked yachting and finding the right angle for diving competitions. Global terrorism? That was less his world.

Then the attack happened. Mason found himself thrust to the center of the news stage; the world was literally watching every choice he made. In 22 hours, he and his ABC Sports boss Roone Arledge changed the way Americans thought about sports coverage, terrorism and a half-dozen other realms. “I didn’t know anything about Hollywood when Tim and Philipp called a few years ago,” Mason says. “But they seemed like smart guys, so I told them what happened.”

As he talked about the on-the-spot improvisations and charged decisions — this essentially was livestreaming long before cable news and YouTube — the filmmakers realized they had their golden ticket. “It was such a rush,” says Binder. “They were inventing this as they went along, with all this adrenaline, and we all felt the same listening to Geoff.”

Adds Fehlbaum: “There was something very compelling about a decision made on the spot about what they would show.” A new, reined-in approach seemed apt.

Read the whole thing; the film is a must-see, and is currently streaming for free for those who subscribe to Paramount+.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll 15

LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT’S THE GELL-MANN AMNESIA EFFECT!

 

As the late Michael Crichton wrote:

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

Regarding Nixon himself, whom SNL spent the entire second half of the 1970s absolutely savaging, as the late Zhou Enlai never said, the outcome of the French Revolution? Too early to say.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll 93

March 1, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Because I love you and want you to be happy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds 2221

DAVID SACKS: Why Zelensky Cannot Make Peace.

While England’s Kier Starmer is still helping advance the gravy train for Zelensky, even he’s saying: Go back and patch things up with Trump.

Posted at 6:18 pm by Ed Driscoll 780

AD ASTRA, PER ARDUA:

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 160

FLASHBACK: Is Democracy Like Sex? I think we’re seeing a vindication of electoral turnover’s anti-parasitic effect now.

Posted at 5:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 69

ROGER KIMBALL: Zelensky goes to town.

Trump, noting Zelensky’s expressions of “hatred” for Putin, explained that he was in no position to dictate terms. “You don’t have any cards” in this game, Trump pointed out. We want to end the killing. That cannot be done by abusing the other party in the conflict. You cannot successfully negotiate that way. “You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say, ‘Hi, Vladimir. How are we doing on the deal?’ It doesn’t work that way. I’m not aligned with anybody. I’m aligned with the United States of America, and for the good of the world.”

All this is true. But for some, the pleasure of abusing Vladimir Putin is great enough to risk World War Three. The commentariat was shocked by the spectacle, as was the Ukrainian ambassador to the US, who could see that Zelensky was making a dog’s breakfast of the press conference. “I have never seen anything like it before,” was a common refrain. Zelensky was used to being a moral hero to his interlocutors. But here was a US president who was interested in peace, not preening. J.D.Vance not only pointed out that Zelensky had not only come to Pennsylvania to campaign for Kamala Harris in October, but also cut to the chase with a pointed question: “Do you think that it’s respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?”

Yikes.

The social-media post Trump issued after the episode was tart and to-the-point. “We had a very meaningful meeting in the White House today,” Trump wrote:

Much was learned that could never be understood without conversation under such fire and pressure. It’s amazing what comes out through emotion, and I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.

Zelensky even lost Lindsey Graham, possibly the most pro-Ukraine senator of either party, with his exhibitionist bit of grandstanding. “Americans witnessing what they saw today would not want Zelensky to be their business partner, including me,” Graham said. “I’ve never been more proud of Trump for showing the American people and the world, you don’t trifle that this man.”

Related: The Approach Trump Had in the Zelensky Meeting Is One Democrats Can’t Wrap Their Head Around.

Trump’s negotiation strategy vastly differs from many other American leaders, especially those on the Democrat side of the aisle. Despite Trump’s reputation as a rough-around-the-edges man whose political charm is far divorced from what people expect after watching The West Wing too much, he is a master negotiator.

Even when it comes to our enemies, Trump is not going to negotiate from a position of bad faith. He sees everything as a businessman would. There are no friends or foes while at the table, just good deals and bad deals.

I thought The Federalist CEO Sean Davis put this very well in a post he made on X:

Trump doesn’t bad mouth anyone who comes to the negotiating table in good faith. Ever. It’s a near-cardinal rule of negotiations for him, and a major reason he’s been such a successful dealmaker.

If you refuse to negotiate, he will trash you. If you lie or negotiate in bad faith, he will trash you. He has zero interest in allowing empty moralizing to get in the way of a deal that he wants.

He has done this his entire career, in business and in politics, and it’s fascinating to me how many people who think of themselves as smart and savvy are incapable of seeing or understanding this dynamic.

The key here isn’t just that Trump is holding the cards and that Zelensky needs him — not the other way around — it’s that Trump is negotiating from a fortified position of “America first.” Everything at the table is subject to that one point, and if anything drifts away from that, then Trump pushes back and pushes back until he’s all the way gone from the table.

Zelensky acted like a petulant child who showed no respect to the country that had given him the money for his war while trying to secure more, and Trump saw no value, not in the war, and not in Zelensky’s disrespect.

The Greta Thunberg-esque “how dare you!!!” shtick just doesn’t play with Trump as it does with worshipful leftists:

 

Earlier: Our collection of tweets from throughout the day yesterday on Zelensky’s meeting with Trump and Vance, and the Twitter-sphere’s reaction.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I think Zelensky knew exactly what he was doing, and picked this fight on purpose. Partly because it strengthens his political position at home, and partly because it strengthens his position with the EU. I suspect, however, that he will find the EU’s support less . . . substantive than he hopes.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 968

MATT MARGOLIS: Stephen Miller Reveals What Triggered the Oval Office Showdown with Zelenskyy.

Miller explained that the confrontation stemmed from Zelenskyy’s failure to show proper appreciation for America’s substantial support of Ukraine. “The only reason that Zelenskyy has a country, that Zelenskyy is in power, is because of the United States,” Miller asserted.

During the Oval Office meeting, tension erupted when Zelenskyy suggested that America would “feel it in the future” if support for Ukraine waned, prompting Trump to erupt: “You don’t know that. You don’t know that. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. We’re trying to solve a problem. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel.”

Miller highlighted Americans’ economic sacrifices in the Ukraine conflict: “Americans have suffered economically funding this war now for years, American security has been degraded, our stockpiles depleted, our ability to project power in other regions of the world negatively affected to protect and defend Ukraine.”

The confrontation reached a boiling point when Trump accused Zelenskyy of “gambling with World War III” and Vance repeatedly demanded that the Ukrainian leader express gratitude.

“He couldn’t even say thank you. Just couldn’t say thank you. Thank you, America,” Miller said.

One of the most contentious moments came when Zelenskyy appeared to resist Trump’s calls for an immediate ceasefire. “He repeatedly rejected President Trump’s statement that we should pursue a ceasefire,” Miller noted. “How could you reject a ceasefire?”

“And, you know, he kept saying, Europe’s doing so much more than us,” Miller added. “Well, then what do you need us for?”

Precisely. Zelensky will meeting with King Charles on Sunday; perhaps that meeting will go a bit more smoothly.

Related: From the home office in Kyiv, VDH proffers the Top Ten “bad takeaways from the Zelenskyy blow-up:”

UPDATE: Time to write some cheques, Old Blighty:

UPDATE (4:14 EST):

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 839

REMIXING THE BEATLES: “AI is not creating John’s voice. John’s voice existed on that cassette and we made the song around him”: Giles Martin explains why you’d be wrong to think ‘AI’ created Lennon’s parts for The Beatles’ ‘Now and Then.’

Billed as the final single from The Beatles, Now and Then was always going to be a big deal. The track, which is nominated for Song of the Year at this weekend’s Brit Awards, has its roots in a 1977 demo recorded by John Lennon.

Its mix features all four original members – Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with the late Lennon and George Harrison – and comes with a long history that includes an aborted mid-’90s attempt at a finished release.

There’s another headline-grabbing element to the eventual release of Now and Then though. As has been widely, and on occasion a little misleadingly reported, the track’s creation has been made possible thanks to the use of neural network technology. Or, as how some have more flatly termed it – AI.

This latter fact seems to have led to misconceptions among some fans, as the track’s co-producer Giles Martin (son of late Beatles producer George Martin) demonstrates in an exclusive video for MusicRadar.

“I think there is this supposition that we used AI to recreate something, or to perhaps enhance John Lennon’s voice,” Martin tells us. “This simply wasn’t the case. All we did was clean a cassette recording he had made all those years ago.”

It’s true that some of the public reaction to Now and Then, particularly in the wake of its recent Grammy win for Best Rock Performance, has led some to raise a suspicious eyebrow. But this perception stems from the entirely false notion that the track has harnessed some form of generative AI. Which it very much hasn’t.

The demixing technology that Peter Jackson has developed seems like Clarke’s Third Law sort of stuff: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Every commercially-available demix software that I’ve either used or demoed, generates serious artifacts when separating parts, creating digital chirps and a sort of watery filtered sound that’s particularly noticeable when a track is soloed. But listening to Giles Martin playing the soloed tracks of Beatles songs in the video below, and little or no audible artifacts can be heard:

Remixing Beatles songs and digitally cleaning vocal tracks seems like pretty benign stuff. Still though, no one should forget that AI and machine learning technology can also be used to far more terrifying ends:

 

Posted at 2:44 pm by Ed Driscoll 49