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A return to permanent war is here: First it will bankrupt America, then destroy it – Salon

Posted: June 1, 2022 at 8:12 pm

The United States, as the near-unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable COVID relief program. No respite from 8.3% inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.

The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion, $6 trillion more than the US GDP of $24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $813 billionfor fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.

We are paying a heavy social, political and economic cost for our militarism. Washington watches passively as the U.S. rots, morally, politically, economically and physically, while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India and other countries extract themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network banks and other financial institutions use to send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world's reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse. It will force the immediate contraction of the U.S. empire shuttering most of its nearly 800 overseas military installations. It will signal the death of Pax Americana.

RELATED:Pimps of war: Neocons who fueled 20 years of carnage in the Middle East are back for more

Democrat or Republican. It does not matter. War is the raison d'tre of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of "national security." The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide.

War is the raison d'tre of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified for "national security." The $40 billion allocated for Ukraine mostly goes to weapons manufacturers. Strategists talk of sending $4 billion more every month.

There were three restraints to the avarice and bloodlust of the permanent war economy that no longer exist. The first was the old liberal wing of the Democratic Party, led by politicians such as Sen. George McGovern, Sen. Eugene McCarthy and Sen. J. William Fulbright, who wrote "The Pentagon Propaganda Machine." The self-identified progressives, a pitiful minority, in Congress today, from Rep. Barbara Lee who was the single vote in the House and the Senate opposing an open-ended authorization allowing the president to wage war in Afghanistan or anywhere else to Rep. Ilhan Omar are now dutifully lining up to fund the latest proxy war. The second restraint was an independent media and academia, including journalists such as I.F Stone and Neil Sheehan along with scholars such as Seymour Melman, author of "The Permanent War Economy"and "Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War." Third, and perhaps most important, was an organized antiwar movement led by religious leaders such as Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr. and Phil and Dan Berrigan, as well as groups such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They understood that unchecked militarism was a fatal disease.

None of these opposition forces, which did not reverse the permanent war economy but curbed its excesses, now exist. The two ruling parties have been bought by corporations, especially military contractors. The press is anemic and obsequious to the war industry. Propagandists for permanent war, largely from right-wing think tanks lavishly funded by the war industry, along with former military and intelligence officials, are exclusively quoted or interviewed as military experts. NBC's "Meet the Press" aired a segment May 13 where officials from Center for a New American Security (CNAS) simulated what a war with China over Taiwan might look like. The co-founder of CNAS, Michle Flournoy, who appeared in the "Meet the Press" war games segment and was considered by Biden to run the Pentagon, wrote in 2020 in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. needs to develop "the capability to credibly threaten to sink all of China's military vessels, submarines and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours."

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The handful of anti-militarists and critics of empire from the left, such as Noam Chomsky, and the right, such as Ron Paul, have been declared persona non grata by a compliant media. The liberal class has retreated into boutique activism where issues of class, capitalism and militarism are jettisoned for "cancel culture," multiculturalism and identity politics. Liberals are cheerleading the war in Ukraine. At least the inception of the war with Iraq saw them join significant street protests. Ukraine is embraced as the latest crusade for freedom and democracy against the new Hitler. There is little hope, I fear, of rolling back or restraining the disasters being orchestrated on a national and global level. The neoconservatives and liberal interventionists chant in unison forwar.Joe Biden has appointed these warmongers, whose attitude to nuclear war is terrifyingly cavalier, to run the Pentagon, the National Security Council and the State Department.

Since all we do is war, all proposed solutions are military. War will cripple Russia. War will curb the growing power of China. These are demented and dangerous fantasies of a ruling class severed from reality.

Since all we do is war, all proposed solutions are military. This military adventurism accelerates the decline, as the defeat in Vietnam and the squandering of $8 trillionin the futile wars in the Middle East illustrate. War and sanctions, it is believed, will cripple Russia, rich in gas and natural resources. War, or the threat of war, will curb the growing economic andmilitary clout of China.

These are demented and dangerous fantasies, perpetrated by a ruling class that has severed itself from reality. No longer able to salvage their own society and economy, they seek to destroy those of their global competitors, especially Russia and China. Once the militarists cripple Russia, the plan goes, they will focus military aggression on the Indo-Pacific, dominating what Hillary Clinton as secretary of state,referringto the Pacific, called "the American Sea."

You cannot talk about war without talking about markets. The U.S., whose growth rate has fallen to below2%, while China's is8.1%, has turned to military aggression to bolster its sagging economy. If the U.S. can sever Russian gas supplies to Europe, it will force Europeans to buy from the United States.U.S. firms,at the same time, would be happy to replace the Chinese Communist Party, even if they must do it through the threat of war, to open unfettered access to Chinese markets. War, if it did break out with China, would devastate the Chinese, American and global economies, destroying free trade between countries as in World War I. But that doesn't mean it won't happen.

Washington is desperately trying to build military and economic alliances to ward off a rising China, whose economy is expected by 2028 to overtake that of the United States,according tothe U.K.'s Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). The White House has said that Biden's recent visit to Asia was aboutsendinga "powerful message" to Beijing and others about what the world could look like if democracies "stand together to shape the rules of the road." The Biden administration has invited South Korea and Japan to attend the NATO summit in Madrid.

But fewer and fewer nations, even among European allies, are willing to be dominated by the United States. Washington's veneer of democracy and supposed respect for human rights and civil liberties is so badly tarnished as to be irrecoverable. Its economic decline, with China's manufacturing 70% higher than that of the U.S., is irreversible. War is a desperate Hail Mary, one employed by dying empires throughout history with catastrophic consequences. "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable," Thucydides noted in "The History of the Peloponnesian War."

A key component to the sustenance of the permanent war state was the creation of the all-volunteer force. Without conscripts, the burden of fighting wars falls to the poor, the working class and military families. This allows the children of the middle class, who led the Vietnam antiwar movement, to avoid service. It protects the military from internal revolts, carried out by troops during the Vietnam War, which jeopardized the cohesion of the armed forces.

The all-volunteer force, by limiting the pool of available troops, also makes the global ambitions of the militarists impossible. Desperate to maintain or increase troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military instituted the "stop-loss"policy that arbitrarily extended active-duty contracts. Its slang term was the "backdoor draft." The effort to bolster the number of troops by hiring private military contractors as well has had a negligible effect. Increased troop levels would not have won the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the tiny percentage of those willing to serve in the military (only7%of the U.S. population are veterans) is an unacknowledged Achilles heel for the militarists.

"As a consequence, the problem of too much war and too few soldiers eludes serious scrutiny," writes historian and retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevichin "After the Apocalypse: America's Role in a World Transformed":

Expectations of technology bridging that gap provide an excuse to avoid asking the most fundamental questions: Does the United States possess the military wherewithal to oblige adversaries to endorse its claim of being history's indispensable nation? And if the answer is no, as the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq suggest, wouldn't it make sense for Washington to temper its ambitions accordingly?

This question, as Bacevich points out, is "anathema." The military strategists work from the supposition that the coming wars won't look anything like past wars. They invest in imaginary theories of future wars that ignore the lessons of the past, ensuring more fiascos.

The political class is as self-deluded as the generals. It refuses to accept the emergence of a multipolar world and the palpable decline of American power. It speaks in the outdated language of American exceptionalism and triumphalism, believing it has the right to impose its will as the leader of the "free world." In his 1992 Defense Planning Guidance memorandum, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz argued that the U.S. must ensure no rival superpower again arises. The U.S. should project its military strength to dominate a unipolar world in perpetuity. On Feb. 19, 1998, on NBC's "Today," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave the Democratic version of this doctrine of unipolarity. "If we have to use force it is because we are Americans; we are the indispensable nation," shesaid. "We stand tall, and we see further than other countries into the future."

This demented vision of unrivaled U.S. global supremacy, not to mention unrivaled goodness and virtue, blinds the establishment Republicans and Democrats. The military strikes they casually used to assert the doctrine of unipolarity, especially in the Middle East, swiftly spawned jihadist terror and prolonged warfare. None of them saw it coming until the hijacked jets slammed into the World Trade Center twin towers. That they cling to this absurd hallucination is the triumph of hope over experience.

There is a deep loathing among the public for these elitist Ivy League architects of American imperialism. Imperialism was tolerated when it was able to project power abroad and produce rising living standards at home. It was tolerated when it restrained itself to covert interventions in countries such as Iran, Guatemala and Indonesia. It went off the rails in Vietnam. The military defeats that followed accompanied a steady decline in living standards, wage stagnation, a crumbling infrastructure and eventually a series of economic policies and trade deals, orchestrated by the same ruling class, which deindustrialized and impoverished the country.

Donald Trump committed the heresy of questioning the sanctity of American empire, calling the invasion of Iraq a "big, fat mistake." Told that Putin was "a killer," he retorted, "You think our country's so innocent?"

The establishment oligarchs, now united in the Democratic Party, distrust Donald Trump. He commits the heresy of questioning the sanctity of the American empire. Trump derided the invasion of Iraq as a "big, fat mistake." He promised "to keep us out of endless war." Trump was repeatedly questioned about his relationship with Vladimir Putin. Putin was "a killer," one interviewer told him. "There are a lot of killers," Trumpretorted. "You think our country's so innocent?" Trump dared to speak a truth that was to be forever unspoken, that the militarists had sold out the American people.

Noam Chomsky took some heat forpointing out, correctly, that Trumpis the "one statesman" who has laid out a "sensible" proposition to resolve the Russia-Ukraine crisis. The proposed solution included "facilitating negotiations instead of undermining them and moving toward establishing some kind of accommodation in Europe in which there are no military alliances but just mutual accommodation."

Trump is too unfocused and mercurial to offer serious policy solutions. He did set a timetable to withdraw from Afghanistan, but he also ratcheted up the economic war against Venezuela and reinstituted crushing sanctions against Cuba and Iran, which the Obama administration had ended. He increased the military budget. He apparentlyflirtedwith carrying out a missile strike on Mexico to "destroy the drug labs." But he acknowledges a distaste for imperial mismanagement that resonates with the public, one that has every right to loath the smug mandarins that plunge us into one war after another. Trump lies like he breathes. But so do they.

The 57 Republicans who refused to support the $40 billion aid package to Ukraine, along with many of the 19 bills that included an earlier $13.6 billion in aid for Ukraine, come out of the kooky conspiratorial world of Trump. They, like Trump, repeat this heresy. They too are attacked and censored. But the longer Biden and the ruling class continue to pour resources into war at our expense, the more these proto-fascists, already set to wipe out Democratic gains in the House and Senate this fall, will be ascendant. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, during the debate on the aid package to Ukraine, which most members were not given time to closely examine,said: "$40 billion but there's no baby formula for American mothers and babies."

"An unknown amount of money to the CIA and Ukraine supplemental bill but there's no formula for American babies," she added. "Stop funding regime change and money laundering scams. A U.S. politician covers up their crimes in countries like Ukraine."

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin immediately attacked Greene for parroting the propaganda of Vladimir Putin.

Greene, like Trump, spoke a truth that resonates with a beleaguered public. The opposition to permanent war should have come from the tiny progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which unfortunately sold out to the craven Democratic leadership to save their political careers. Greene is demented, but Raskin and the Democrats peddle their own brand of lunacy. We are going to pay a very steep price for this burlesque.

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‘The Sound of 13’ highlights Black achievement in classical music – Texas Public Radio

Posted: at 8:11 pm

"The ratification of the 13th Amendment promised freedom for Afro-Americans - at least, on paper. While many people believe that those promises of freedom have yet to fully manifest, Black people have still managed to tell the stories of struggle, joy, and the continued journey toward freedom. Hope you can join me to celebrate some of those musical stories on The Sound of 13."

-Garrett McQueenHost, The Sound of 13

If youre looking for a classical music program that addresses the racial injustice in our society through the lens of classical music, look no further. In The Sound of 13, host Garrett McQueen opens an historical and contemporary conversation of race with classical music and the 13th Amendment as the guide. This second season of the series will air Sundays at noon on KPAC 88.3 FM, beginning on Juneteenth (June 19), and will continue through September 11.

"I am super excited to share this program with the KPAC audience," says TPR's Nathan Cone. "I loved the first series, which was full of fascinating historical and musical discovery, and also led me to consider pieces I've known and loved in a new way."

Episode Listing:

ABOUT THE HOST: Garrett McQueen is a professional bassoonist who has performed with symphonies and in venues across the country. He is also an accomplished instructor and has performed in multiple Broadway musicals and television series. Garrett is a strong advocate for the diversification of classical music and the advancement of Black musicians in the field. He's also the co-creator of the podcast, Trilloquy.

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Study: There May Be as Many as Four Evil Civilizations in Our Galaxy – Futurism

Posted: at 8:11 pm

In a mind-bending new paper, one researcher calculates that there are as many as four "malicious" alien civilizations in our home Milky Way galaxy alone.

According to the yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, by Spanish researcher Alberto Caballero, it's not a leap to assume that if aliens are anything like humans that is, if they're warlike and prone to invade the territory of others there's a pretty strong probability thatsome number would pose at least a potential threat to us Earthlings.

The first caveat, asVice notes in an interview with Caballero, is that the sole author of the paper is not an astrophysicist, but a conflict resolution PhD student at Spain's University of Vigo. He has, however, demonstrated acumen in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) field by publishing a separate paper in the University of Cambridge's peer reviewed International Journal of Astrobiology about the potential origins of the notorious WOW! signal.

Part thought experimentandpart game theory, Caballero's admittedly out-there paper is also interesting because of the way he reached his conclusions: by using a formula that takes into consideration how technologic advances seem to make civilizations less likely to invade one another.

By using known data about the ways humans have historically invaded each others' territories and comparing it to the number of assumed habitable exoplanets in the Milky Way, this alien-focused conflict resolution researcher deduced that although there could be up to four hostile alien civilizations in our galaxy, Earth is vastly more likely to be destroyed by an asteroid than to be invaded by bloodthirsty aliens.

"I did the paper based only on life as we know it," Caballero told Vice. "We dont know the mind of extraterrestrials. An extraterrestrial civilization may have a brain with a different chemical composition and they might not have our empathy or they might have more psychopathological behaviors."

That's a fair point. There's a whole lot of base assumptions going into Caballero's paper: first, that an extraterrestrial civilization would even be interested enough in humanity to invade us, and secondly that increases in technological advancements would make them less warlike and not more so.

But given that space peace between the US and Russia continues to hold fast amid the latter's US-opposed invasion of Ukraine, maybe it's not such a stretch to believe that if aliens think anything like us, their potential ability to travel the cosmos would subdue their bloodlust.

READ MORE:There Are 4 Malicious Extraterrestrial Civilizations in Milky Way, Researcher Estimates [Vice Motherboard]

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China Launching Three Astronauts As It Expands Its Space Station – Futurism

Posted: at 8:11 pm

It's happening!Tiangong

China might be sending three of its astronauts into space as soon as the first week of June.

Yesterday's SpaceNews report said that the Long March 2F rocket was rolled out slowly to the pad at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Sunday.

The rocket had been on standby for just shy of a year in case it was needed for an emergency mission to the country's space station, and the three crew members are now headed to Tiangong to oversee construction. They're expected to stay on the 54-foot-long, 13-foot-in-diameter Tianhe core module for as long as six months while new modules are sent to the station to dock.

The crewed mission will be the third since April of 2021, when the first crewed mission blasted off.

China is basically banned from collaborating on the US- and Russian-controlled International Space Station, thus the need to launch its own low Earth orbit base for scientific experiments and space exploration.

However, there may be more collaboration in the future, since in 2021 Newsweek reported China expected to host international astronauts from Germany, Switzerland and others.

The ban isn't slowing them down though China previously said it plans to welcome tourist and commercial flights to the station. In March, the country said it'll have spots available within a decade.

A little competition is a good thing, but with Earth's orbit so full of space junk the ISS has already swerved to avoid Chinese satellite remnants, more stuff floating around could make for a bumpy ride.

More on lights in the sky: Scientists Intrigued by Strange Lights in Old Space Photos

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This Free New RPG Rockets Science and Magic to 1930s Venus (Where It Belongs) – Gizmodo

Posted: at 8:11 pm

Satirical in tone and tongue-in-cheek in its presentation, the absurdist science-fantasy Dr. Grordborts Scientific Adventure Violence is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure setting and sourcebook, first devolved by Greg Broadmore, an artist, writer, and director at Wt Workshop of Lord of the Rings fame in Aotearoa. Full of pulpy, old-school, retro-fiction images and ideas, the text lampoons colonizers, sexists, and toxic masculinity within its pages, creating an excessive and exorbitant world that is built to destroy those who seek to destroy it. And now you can visit that world yourself.

This stand-alone, ready-to-play adventure module is available for free by distributor Exalted Funeral, and throughout the year, more supplemental materials and additional adventures will be produced. And as you might expect from a book that had its basis in prop-making, the retro-futurism rayguns depicted in the pages of the book are available in real life from Wt Workshop.

Even Guillermo del Toro has called the ultra-violent steampunk worldbuilding of Grordbort a dazzling Uchronism that works both as a satire of our times and as a convex mirror for a future that never was. A violent, vibrant Neverland, witty and brilliantly realized, in a blurb he provided for the book Dr. Grordbort Presents Victory!, published by Dark Horse.

Click through to see some of the fantastic and fantastically absurd art produced for the new version of Dr. Grordbort. And dont forget to download the io9-exclusive adventure module at the end of the slideshow!

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The UK Is Producing Too Much Wind Power, Actually – Futurism

Posted: at 8:11 pm

It's bittersweet.Slow 'Bine

It's a little bittersweet, but the UK actually produced more wind power than the system could handle this week.

Wednesday's Bloomberg report said a few wind farms in Scotland were asked to reduce output by 25 megawatts, or about as much as two average US households uses in a year. The finance pub says UK grids are having trouble coping with all the power their ocean and land wind farms generate, nor does the country have the ability to store large amounts of it in batteries.

Additionally, windmills can also shut down automatically to protect the machines from damage if they spin too fast in blustery weather like the winds that produced the power overflow. Bloomberg says the optimal wind speed is 33 mph anything above that can damage a turbine.

The news comes days after researchers said in a new study that humanity hasn't yet hit the right benchmarks to conquer interplanetary travel and life. We can't produce and store enough energy from Earth's multiple sources yet to power such travels.

That doesn't mean we aren't trying, though.

On Wednesday the UK hit an energy production peak that covered more than half of Britain's power needs, electric vehicles are becoming more accessible and as a species we seem at least somewhat determined to understand and harness nuclear power.

It might not seem like a huge sign of progress, but asking wind farms to slightly reduce production is probably one of many steps on the journey to make Earth sustainable we need energy productionandlong-term storage if we're ever going cold turkey on fossil fuels.

More on the need to electrify: Zoo Saving DNA From Rare Animals In Case They Go Extinct

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What does Tommy Pham, Joc Pederson fantasy-football slap say about the future of sports? – The Globe and Mail

Posted: at 8:11 pm

Joc Pederson, #23 of the San Francisco Giants, hits a single in the eighth inning against the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park on May 29, in Cincinnati, Ohio.Dylan Buell/Getty Images

Years ago, I talked to a futurist about what sports would look like in 50 years.

I also asked a few academics. They were full of apocalyptic guesses (my favourite being that bear baiting and gander pulling were going to make a comeback).

The futurist had a whole utopian system worked out in the years to come, there would be no need for actual people in sports. Wed be rooting for huge robotic duplicates of famous athletes, playing on space-based platforms.

Ive had to cover baseball in Houston in August. The yawning emptiness of space sounds like an improvement to me.

It all seemed pretty far out at the time. But in the intervening years we have begun moving toward this sci-fi vision of what sports will be in our post-human future.

The latest example professional sports people who play real sports coming to blows over imaginary sports.

Had Cincinnati Red Tommy Pham and San Francisco Giant Joc Pederson decided to hold a public slapping contest in April or October, it might not have got much play. But its nearly June the beginning of MLBs slide into summer torpor and stories are light on the ground.

The broad strokes are this. Pham and Pederson had a meeting of the minds during a pregame batting practice. They did it on the field where everyone could see them. Hard words were exchanged, and then Pham slapped Pederson. A Will-Smith-style slap, according to one observer.

There is nothing sadder than baseball players trying to fist-fight. No one was hurt. Neither of the two guys involved are stars.

So this would not be as big a story as it has become had the reason for the fight not come out fantasy football.

Pham and Pederson apparently belonged to the same fantasy league, along with a bunch of other major-leaguers.

We all know that fantasy leagues are terrible. They suck up a huge amount of brain power that you might otherwise use to cultivate useful hobbies. They destroy the experience of watching sports because rather than watch a game, you spend three hours staring a hole in the one guy whos on your fantasy team. The more you stare, the stronger the football-repelling force field around him grows. And while most people are bad at fantasy strategy, everyone thinks theyre really good at it, which can cost you real money.

This is where sports is going sports about sports, just a lot more expensive, with or without robots.

So when you hear something has gone wrong in a fantasy league, no ones surprised. But actual swinging fists? Thats a new one to me.

Pham felt Pederson was cheating in the league. Pederson claimed the offending move putting a player on injured reserve and then slotting in a free agent is totally legit.

Pham countered that there was a lot of money involved.

Pederson agreed about the money, but said Pham made the same roster move that very week.

That was basically all of it, Pederson said.

But no, it was not basically all of it.

There was also the .gif Pederson sent to the fantasy-league group chat. That also upset Pham.

There is nothing less funny than listening to someone explain a joke. But there is nothing more funny than watching someone explain a joke like they are giving testimony at a war-crimes trial.

This is the role Pederson, downcast and speaking just above a whisper, was forced into.

It is true. I did send a .gif making fun of the Padres [Phams former team]. And if I hurt anyones feelings, I apologize for that.

Since the court needed to know more about Pedersons sense of humour before it could render judgment, he decided to show everyone the .gif on his phone.

It was, like, three weightlifters lifting. And, um, Pederson held up the phone.

The weightlifters, tagged with the logos of the Dodgers, Giants and Padres, throw kettle bells in the air. The Padres lifter gets brained by his.

Because they were a really good team. It was kind of making fun of how they were, ah at this point, Pederson pauses and seems to fully realize how ridiculous this is not playing well to make the playoffs, with a very talented team It was supposed to be lighthearted.

The comedic effect of this clip is heightened by a few things the mournful silence of the reporters on hand, the fact that Pederson looks like Dennis the Menace on dietary supplements, and that he has his baseball cap screwed onto his head like his mother slapped it on him as he ran out of the house. All these things combine to make this a pretty great episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. All you need is Larry in the MAGA hat lurking at the back of the scrum.

As a general rule, I enjoy a lot of aggro in sports. It shows that the millionaires out on the field arent just punching a clock.

But more and more, sports feels like high school. The tension isnt based on intercity rivalry or fan animus. Its a bunch of popular kids jockeying among themselves for social position, with occasional flare-ups when someones feelings get hurt.

Take the recent example of Josh Donaldson mocking Chicagos Tim Anderson by calling him Jackie (after Jackie Robinson). Thats mean-kid behaviour. Its got nothing to do with sports.

On the one hand, there is a sort of shameful joy in watching your physical betters make public knobs of themselves. And on the other, its just depressing.

Maybe thats the future my futurist saw. One in which we remove the pettiest human parts of our pastimes and get back to caring about things that dont actually matter, like who wins ball games.

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Our Lady Peace bringing ‘future rock’ to Vancouver Island with holographic show Vancouver Island Free Daily – vancouverislandfreedaily.com

Posted: at 8:11 pm

Some concerts are about reminiscing about that old-time rock n roll. Not with Our Lady Peace not on this tour.

The multi-platinum Canadian alternative rock band will be kicking off its Wonderful Future Theatrical Experience tour next week with a pair of dates on Vancouver Island.

The June 6 concert in at the Royal Theatre in Victoria and the June 7 date at the Port Theatre in Nanaimo support the bands latest album, Spiritual Machines 2, and singer Raine Maida said its exactly the kind of future rock album hes been wanting to make for 10 years.

Should this record sound like Spiritual Machines 1? I dont think so. Its 20 years later. Were a much different band, Dave Sitek is a much different producer and weve grown exponentially, Maida said.

He said the album has very rhythmic-oriented soundscapes and sound design, and said the band has tried to make the music new and fresh by introducing rhythms, instrumentations and arrangements that arent as familiar.

I think it still has the core of what we do, but we needed to get away from the rock n roll clichs that are killing rock right now, Maida said.

As with 2000s Spiritual Machines, Our Lady Peace worked with futurist Ray Kurzweil and incorporated his predictions into the record.

Its not like this dystopian, scorched Earth that film and TV want to present in terms of what the future looks like Maida said. Ray is very hopeful.

Maida said its fascinating to hear Kurzweils predictions about computings role in solving some of the worlds problems, especially after seeing how the futurist got everything right, basically, around the time Spiritual Machines was made two decades ago.

Now, Our Lady Peace is leaning into the future. Concert-goers will be greeted at the theatre by holograms thanks to technology so advanced that the band is under a non-disclosure agreement when it comes to discussing the tech. Audience members will receive a virtual playbill in the form of a non-fungible token as soon as they walk in.

Maida said NFTs hold appeal because they help create a different type of connection with fans. He said with social media platforms, artists growth is controlled and stunted by algorithms, and likes and follows arent transferrable.

Its the ability to have true ownership over your communities and as an artist, as a creator, I dont think we can afford to not pay attention to that he said. We can start building our communities for real.

Our Lady Peace wants fans to hear what Maida says is the best collection of songs the band has ever put together, presented alongside thought-provoking predictions, made memorable with holograms and digital collectibles.

And even as they play hits from 25 years ago like Supermans Dead, in which Maida sings about the world being a subway, they feel like they can glance back while at the same time embracing a wonderful future.

It really has come to fruition now. Everything just happens so quickly, right? That wheel spins so fast. We are on this hyper speed loop at this point, Maida said. So those songs, some people have asked me, how are you going to fit those songs? They actually fit. Not that I was any kind of a prophet but theres a lot of stuff that has a thread thematically.

For ticket information for Nanaimo, visit http://www.porttheatre.com. For Victoria, go to http://www.rmts.bc.ca.

READ ALSO: Holograms help power Our Lady Peace tour this spring

READ ALSO: Raine Maida, Chantal Kreviazuk will present new duo act in Nanaimo

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Businessman urges city to make more of R. Buckminster Fuller ties – The Southern

Posted: at 8:11 pm

LES O'DELLThe Southern

Scott Thorne thinks Carbondale and Southern Illinois University Carbondale are missing out on a great opportunity.

The area businessman and marketing instructor at Southeast Missouri State University wonders why SIU and Carbondale do not recognize and celebrate connections with noted architect and futurist R. Buckminster Fuller.

On his Carbondale Gazette blog last week, Thorne questioned the lack of commemoration of Fullers time in Carbondale. He called Fuller one of the great minds of the 20th century.

Thorne wrote, It has always surprised me that Carbondale does not do more to play up the citys connection to him, and musing, Why not play up the connection they have to one of the few figures of international renown to call the city home?

Fuller was a designer, architect, philosopher, inventor and futurist perhaps best-known for his development of the geodesic dome. In fact, Fuller and his wife Anne lived in a dome on Forest Avenue in Carbondale from 1960 to 1971 during his tenure as a professor of design science exploration at SIU. It is the only dome in which he ever lived.

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The home, which has been painstakingly restored by a not-for-profit organization, is one of several domes in community Thorne noted in his blog post, identifying two picnic-shelter-style domes on the SIU campus, a dome near the Gaia House Interfaith Center and one other geodesic dome residence in southwestern Carbondale.

Still, Thorne thinks there should be more than a few structures to honor Fuller.

If we are looking for some ways to make Carbondale stand out from other communities, emphasizing the fact that this is one of the few places where Fuller actually was a professor would be something, Thorne said.

He suggested further recognition of Fuller.

Id like to see a statue acknowledging him or renaming a building or naming a street after him; some sort of public acknowledgment of arguably one of the greatest thinkers of the last half of the 20th century who spent time and worked here, he said.

Carbondale resident and Fuller fan Brent Ritzel agrees with Thorne. He was one of the organizers of a Fuller Future Festival about ten years ago.

We just need to embrace Fullers legacy, Ritzel said. The bottom line is that the dome home has to be one of the top Bucky assets on planet Earth. We really have an incredibly unique asset here and we need to take advantage of it.

Ritzel said he believes that the dome could potentially draw thousands of visitors to Carbondale annually. He added that he personally has hundreds of Fuller artifacts which he believes would make the beginnings of a future Fuller museum exhibition.

Carbondale architect Thad Heckman, who co-authored Buckys Dome, a history of Fullers Forest Avenue home and its restoration, said he thinks winds of change are bringing Fuller more prominence in the community.

I think in the last number of years, change is really coming into effect, he said. He explained grants from the City of Carbondale have assisted in the resurrection of the dome and he is designing a tribute to Fuller which will be included in Carbondales new Southern Illinois Multi-Modal Station.

I think theres more of an awareness now in a positive way around campus of Bucky and they city is certainly very much aware and supportive of efforts to honor him, he said, adding that SIU now offers a honors class on R. Buckminster Fuller.

I think more needs to happenawareness of Buckminster Fuller, promotion for the domethose kinds of things, he added.

Carbondale City Manager Gary Williams has a photo of Fuller on his desk. He said Fullers history and reputation should be cultivated.

We see the dome as a tourist attraction that has a year-round presence in Carbondale and I think there are more opportunities that the city and university can use to take advantage of Fullers affiliation.

Williams said the city shares the same vision as the R. Buckminster Fuller Dome organization: to fulfill Fullers vision and preserve his legacy.

We absolutely should acknowledge it more and celebrate the unique aspects, he said.

Thorne is taking action to recognizing Fuller. Students from Brehm Preparatory School are painting a geodesic dome mural on the side of his Castle Perilous store in downtown Carbondale. But still, hed like to see more to connect R. Buckminster Fuller and Carbondale.

We paint paw prints every year, so why not do something that calls attention to the communitys link to Fuller? he wondered.

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Elon Says a Recession Would Be a "Good Thing" – Futurism

Posted: at 8:11 pm

"Some bankruptcies need to happen."Good Riddance

Fresh off his recent Twitter-buying fiasco, Elon Musk is now claiming that it would be good, actually, if the world went into a recession.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO revealed that he believes the world is approaching a recession which "is actually a good thing," he says.

"It has been raining money on fools for too long," the world's richest man remarked. "Some bankruptcies need to happen."

His remarks come at a rather odd time, given that Tesla stocks have been plunging over the last couple of weeks, ever since the billionaire CEO revealed plans to buy Twitter for $44 billion.

The comments also shouldn't come as too much of a surprise given the fact that Musk has repeatedly railed against the stock market, most recently criticizing the S&P 500's sustainability index for booting Tesla from the list.

In follow-up tweets, Musk argued that the next recession could last "about 12 to 18 months," noting that "companies that are inherently negative cash flow (ie value destroyers) need to die, so that they stop consuming resources."

In other words, his competitors should get off of his turf.

Musk also revealed that he thinks COVID-19 lockdowns made people lazy.

"All the COVID stay-at-home stuff has tricked people into thinking that you dont actually need to work hard," Musk said. "Rude awakening inbound!"

But is Musk really in a position to make these sorts of arguments? Given that he has already lost more than a $1 billion in Twitter stock since he began his cursed bid to buy the social media giant, it seems very much like he could be the one who's in for a rude awakening after all, it's been "raining money" on him for quite a long time.

But then again, people in glass houses sure do love to throw stones.

More on Elon:Elon Musk Speculates About Storing All Human DNA In A Database

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