John Oliver’s condemnation of Bolsonaro does not go far enough

John Oliver is probably my second favorite political comedian after Cody Johnston of Some More News. He has a well-deserved reputation for delving into obscure and unpleasant details to present a compelling and deep analysis of pressing problems in the world. All of this is why I find it so disappointing that Oliver still has a mysterious inability to report well on anything happening in Latin America.

I first became aware of this flaw thanks to the work of Michael Brooks, whose ability to maintain a solid understanding of international affairs went beyond any other journalist I’ve seen. He died far too young, and we’re still all a bit worse off for his death. I can’t do as good of a response as he could have, but I’ll do my best.

For those of you who don’t know, Brazil is holding the first round of its presidential election tomorrow. The race is between former president Luis Ignácio “Lula” da Silva, and current president Jair Bolsonaro. Lula was not a perfect president, if such a thing exists, but from what I can tell he was far better for the working class and international reputation of Brazil than any of its previous leaders, or any president the United States has ever had.

Lula was imprisoned on a bogus corruption conviction in April of 2018, just six months before the presidential election, and the judge, Sergio Moro, blocked efforts to release him. Moro was appointed Minister of Justice and Public Security by Bolsonaro when he took office in 2019.

Later that year, The Intercept published evidence of a plot between Moro and the prosecutor to imprison Lula to keep him from participating in the 2018 election. The conviction was annulled in 2021, apparently over jurisdiction, and a retrial was ordered in a more appropriate court. It’s unclear to me where things will go from there, but all of this, including the apparent FBI involvement, makes this seem like yet another effort by the United States to undermine a popular left-wing leader in favor of a fascist.

And that brings me to Oliver’s discussion of Bolsonaro.

There’s a lot to like about this video. I think the biggest problem with it is that it seems to stop at the points where the situation is similar to events in the US. It makes a somewhat compelling case that Bolsonaro is dangerous, but it leaves out a lot of context. This is part of a pattern for John Oliver. When it comes to Mexico, Central America, and South America, he seems to have a bizarre aversion to actually digging into stories. The most charitable explanation I can think of is that they’ve got someone on staff who’s in charge of the Latin America segments, who is either lazy, or holding some kind of odd centrist bias.

He was right to cast Bolsonaro as a threat to democracy. Bolsonaro has been openly saying that he won’t accept any result other than victory or death, casting doubt on the electoral system without evidence (sound familiar?), and he got into power in the first place via a judicial coup more blatant than the one that put George W. Bush in power in 2000.

Unfortunately, it’s worse than that. Beyond his extensive ties to both the military and Brazil’s past military dictatorship, Bolsonaro also as ties to terrorism and political assassination. Bolsonaro was twice photographed with suspects in the murder of councilwoman Marielle Franco, and turned out to live in the same high-end apartment complex as one of them.

BRASILWIREput together this timeline:

August, 2003: Jair Bolsonaro publicly defends Militias in a speech in Congress, saying, “I just heard a Congressman criticize death squads. As long as the State does not have the courage to adopt the death penalty, the crime of extermination, in my understanding, should be very welcome…. If it depended on me they would have all of my support…”

March 2007 – As a State Congressman, Jair’s son Flavio attempts to legalize militias. “For me, human rights are not for all humans, because some people cannot be called humans. They are monsters,” he says in defense of death squad executions.

August, 2011 – After Judge Patricia Acioli is assassinated with 21 gunshots by two militia members, Flavio Bolsonaro commits character assassination against her, “May God take her but the absurd and gratuitous way that she used to humiliate police officers contributed to her having many enemies,” he said. Before her assassination, Judge Acioli had convicted 60 police officers for acting in militias and for death squad activities.

February, 2018 – During a radio interview on Joven Pan, Jair Bolsonaro, again, defends Militias. “There are people who support militias,” he says, “because it is the way that they can live without violence. In those regions where people pay militias, there is no violence.”

March, 2018 – Marielle Franco and her driver Anderson Gomes are assassinated. Jair Bolsonaro is the only presidential candidate who does not publicly condemn the killings.

April 2018 – A motion is passed in the Rio de Janeiro State Legislature to posthumously award slain city councilwoman Marielle Franco with the Tiradentes Medal. Flavio Bolsonaro is the only lawmaker who votes against it.

September, 2018 – Alex and Alan Oliveira, two Rio de Janeiro Military Police officers, are arrested for committing acts of corruption and extortion as part of a Militia that operates on the West Side of Rio. It comes out that both had worked on Flavio and Jair Bolsonaro’s political campaigns, and that their sister was the Treasurer of the Rio de Janeiro state headquarters of the Bolsonaro’s PSL party.

October 2018 – Two candidates for Rio de Janeiro State Congress in Bolsonaro’s PSL party, rip a street sign honoring Marielle Franco in half at a campaign event, while gubernatorial candidate Wilson Witzel cheers. In the scandal that ensues, Flavio Bolsonaro defends their actions.

October 2018 – The Civil Police Organized Crime Unit, GAECO, arrests 18 members of a militia operating in the Rio de Janeiro suburb of São Gonçalo and discovers that they have been working on the campaign of retired Military Police Colonel Fernando Salema, running for State Congressman for the Bolsonaro’s PSL Party.

December 2018 – COAF, the Federal Board of Financial Activities Control, reveals that the Flavio Bolsonaro’s former driver, Fabricio Queiroz, made unusual money transfers valuing $R1.2 million in 2016 and 2017. The ex-Military Police officer committed at least 10 killings while on active duty.

January 2019 – COAF discovers that, in addition to the R$1.2 million, another R$5.8 million went through Queiroz’s accounts while employed for Flavio Bolsonaro during the two previous mandates.

January 2019 – COAF reveals that, during one month in 2017, Flavio Bolsonaro received R$96,000 in 50 bank deposits valued at just under the minimum limit to require money laundering investigations.

January 2019 – President Jair Bolsonaro issues a decree moving the COAF’s jurisdiction to the Justice Ministry, headed by Lula’s captor, former Lava Jato investigator Sergio Moro. In a move widely viewed as made to protect his employer, Moro fires the director of COAF and, two months later, replaces him with a former co-worker from the deeply politicized Lava Jato investigation.

January 2019 – Globo newspaper reveals that, before he went to the nation’s most expensive hospital, Albert Einstein in São Paulo, for what appears to have been frivolous treatment to delay testimony, Queiroz was hiding in the Rio das Pedras favela, which is controlled by the Escritorio de Crime militia under investigation for the assassination of Marielle Franco.

January 2019 – The media announces that Flavio Bolsonaro employed the mother and girlfriend of former Military Police special forces Captain and leader of the Escritorio de Crime militia Antonio Nobrega, in his state congressional cabinet for over a decade.

March 2019 – After legendary Rio de Janeiro Samba School Mangueira pays homage to Marielle Franco during Rio’s carnaval parade competition in an event transmitted live to tens of millions across Brazil, Carlos Bolsonaro tries to smear the group on social media, hypocritically accusing them of involvement with militias.

March 12, 2019 – Elcio Queiroz and Ronnie Lessa, two former Rio de Janeiro Military Police officers, were arrested for the alleged assassination of Marielle Franco. Lessa lives in a R$4 million home in the same small beach-side condominium complex as Jair Bolsonaro, which he purchased shortly after Marielle was murdured. During a press conference, Civil Police Organized Crime Unit officer Giniton Lages says that Ronnie Lessa’s daughter used to date one of Jair Bolsonaro’s sons. Immediately afterwards, he is removed from the case.

Maybe that’s not conclusive, but I think it’s certainly worth considering.

As I said, John Oliver is right to be concerned about Bolsonaro, but I find it strange that he would leave out so much of the history there. I also find it disappointing that Oliver’s “analysis” so often seems to rely on stereotyping and denigration of politicians who seem to be doing better by their people than anyone Oliver has lived under in the U.S. or the U.K.. I think the danger is greater that Oliver is indicating, and Bolsonaro holding on to power would be bad for all of us.

Sadly, this video from 2018 is still relevant:

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Tegan is home at last, so we’re celebrating with a couple cat pictures.

Tegan is finally home from three weeks out of town, and both His Holiness and I are very happy. She’s still catching up on sleep and recovering from her journey, so I decided to use today to share a couple cat pictures. The first is from our semi-regular turn about the village. St. Ray likes to sample the various grass patches on offer, and sniffing around for traces of the various outdoor cats and strays that pass through “his” territory. When we first started this tradition, I was worried that I’d be cleaning up grass-filled puke around the apartment, but it seems to agree with him just fine, and he’s almost as insistent about his constitutional as he is about being fed. I particularly like this shot, because for some reason his legs look disproportionately short and stubby – like one of those “munchkin cats”. I think it’s just that he’s crouching a bit to make sure he’s got the best leverage for his salad.

The image shows a brindled black and gray-brown cat with white legs, a white chest, and a white muzzle and forehead. He’s craning forward with his mouth open wide to take a big chomp out of a blade of grass. The grass is growing by a tree, whose trunk fills the lefthand third of the photo.. You can see a sun-dappled patch of lawn behind the cat, and out-of-focus bushes and mulch behind that. The angle of the photo, combined with the cat’s plush fur and chunky stature make it look like his legs are comically short and stubby.

Salad is important whether or not Tegan is home.

Her homecoming is slightly marred by the fact that we are distancing in the apartment for a bit, so he doesn’t get to have both of us on the same piece of furniture. It also means that the windows are open, otherwise the distancing would be pointless. That means that it’s very chilly in here. The walls are cement, and do a great job of staying cool. That’s lovely in the summer, but Autumn has landed with a resounding crunch, the days are getting shorter fast, and it’s not uncommon for it to be colder inside than outside. This means that the natural thing to do is to huddle together for warmth, but Tegan and I are being downright irrational, so he has to cuddle with us one at a time. Normally, when he hangs out on the bed, he’ll be just under an arm’s length away, but yesterday he came and curled up as tightly against me as he possibly could:

The image shows myself (a bearded human) and His Holiness (a cat) on a bed. My gray sweater fills up most of the photo, with my head craning to fit in the bottom left corner. You can see the green flannel sheet and a bit of a black t-shirt in the top left corner, by my shoulder. His Holiness is curled very tightly under my armpit, and is resting his head on my chest. For all he’s a chonker, he looks tiny in this picture.

He’s currently doing his shift on Tegan’s lap in the other room as I write this, and he’ll shift back to me when she goes to sleep, ’cause there’s not room for both of them on the couch. Even if things aren’t fully back to normal, we’re all glad to be in the same building, and within yelling distance of each other. Tegan and I holler conversations, and he spends the two hours or so before each of his three feedings screaming about his impending doom to all who can hear.

Truly, nothing says domestic bliss like a small mammal screaming at the top of its lungs

If you want to forestall the looming starvation of His Holiness Saint Ray the Cat, or you want the ability to request more cat posts, you can support me and my work at patreon.com/oceanoxia. I’d like to increase the number of people giving $5 per month and under. That seems to be a better foundation for crowdsourced income, so if perchance you were thinking that your three pennies per day isn’t enough to make a difference, well, you can stop thinking that now! How exciting for you!

ADHD and the daily struggle to make my brain do what I want it to (spoilers for Everything Everywhere All At Once)

This tweet fired a couple neurons for me that made me realize something new about the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once. I’m going to talk about a central part of how the story works, so if you haven’t seen the movie, please watch it before continuing (unless you’re at all vulnerable to photosensitive seizures, because this movie has a lot of strobe effects throughout). Maybe a couple of entirely hypothetical people could watch it with a visiting relative! Seriously – don’t read this blog post if you haven’t seen the movie, and you’re going to at any point. It’s an emotional rollercoaster that you won’t regret, and I don’t want to take away from that.

[Read more…]

Video: True Facts about the slime mold

Today was more or less a day off. Enjoyed napping with rain on the windows, shaved parts of my head, and met up with some cool people for drinks and conversation. A pleasant time was had by all, except His Holiness, who is doubly angry. Not only did we go out, we’ve also had to cut back on his kibble, because he’s been progressing in his effort to become a literal furball. I hope you’re all having a pleasant weekend, and in service of that, here are some true facts about slime mold. These are some of the strangest and most fascinating organisms out there, and this video is a great overview of their bizarre lives.

Well, ain’t that just the sea’s bees?

Because of the way things can drift around in water, a lot of different aquatic organisms use a sort of “immersion” strategy for reproduction. Rather than going through all the bother of finding a mate and copulating, they just produce such massive amounts of gametic material that it’s guaranteed to encounter its target, just drifting around. This is particularly a good strategy for species that are either stuck to the sea floor, or that are themselves drifting without direction. Another version with which you’re probably familiar is the clouds of pollen released by trees and some other plants in the spring.

I had long assumed – and I wasn’t alone in this – that aquatic plants of all sorts relied on this dispersal method. It seems obvious, right? With water being an ever-present resource, why would any sort of “pollinator” relationship develop? Well, as always with evolution, the adaptations that provide immediate, short-term benefits are the ones most likely to stick around.

In this case, it turns out that red algae “pollen” is a bit sticky (as gametes are wont to be), and there are tiny creatures that make their living on and around the algae in question:

Are sea animals involved in the reproductive cycle of algae, like pollinating insects on dry land? Dispersal of the male gametes, or spermatia, of red algae generally relies on water movement, and up until now, scientists did not recognize the role played by animals.

Yet an international team led by Myriam Valero, a CNRS scientist affiliated with the Evolutionary Biology and Ecology of Algae research unit (CNRS / Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile / Sorbonne University / Universidad Austral de Chile) and Roscoff Marine Station (CNRS / Sorbonne University)1 , has revealed that tiny marine creatures called idoteas act as ‘sea bees’ for the red alga Gracilaria gracilis.

 

The image is a black and white microscope photograph of an Idotea isopod. It has a segmented body, with at least eight legs. It’s shaped a bit like a pill bug or a prawn – longer than it is wide, with what appears to be two long, thick, segmented antennae on its head. The only color in the photo is little green dots, highlighting the places where algal gametes are stick to the Idotea’s exoskeleton. There’s a circle around two of its legs, corresponding to a zoomed-in circular photo showing a more detailed image of the Idotea’s clawed feet, and the “pollen” dusting them.

Idoteas contribute to the fertilization of G. gracilis as they swim amid these algae. The surfaces of the male algae are dotted with reproductive structures that produce spermatia coated with mucilage, a sticky substance. As an idotea passes by, the spermatia adhere to its cuticle and are then deposited on the thalli of any female alga the crustacean comes into contact, thus helping G. gracilis reproduction.

But idoteas also stand to benefit in this arrangement. The seaweed gives them room and board: idotea cling to the algae as a protection from strong currents, and they munch on small organisms growing on their thalli. This is an example of a mutualistic interaction—a win-win situation for plant and animal alike—and the first time that an interaction of this kind between a seaweed and an animal has been observed.

While these initial findings do not indicate the extent to which animal transport of gametes contributes to algal fertilization relative to the role of water movement—previously thought to be the sole means of gamete dispersal—they do offer surprising insight into the origin of animal-mediated fertilization of plants. Before this discovery, the latter was assumed to have emerged among terrestrial plants 140 million years ago. Red algae arose over 800 million years ago and their fertilization via animal intermediaries may long predate the origin of pollination on land. Valero’s team now aim to focus on several other questions: Do idoteas trigger the release of spermatia? Are they able to distinguish male G. gracilis algae from female individuals? And most importantly, do similar interactions exist between other marine species?

First off, I just want to appreciate the way the authors take time to flesh out the historical implications of this discovery. Underwater ecosystems, as far as I know, tend not to have plants that evolve organs specifically to attract animals as pollinators. I could imagine a number of reasons for this, but at the same time, I could imagine reasons why it might not be a beneficial strategy on land. For one, if the current decline in insect populations continues, wind-pollinated plants are probably going to fare a bit better in the coming century or two.

Part of me wants to assume that if there were underwater organisms that used something like scent to attract “pollinators”, we’d have noticed that behavior in the animal in question. That said, our oceans are vast, treacherous deserts, with brutal, unyielding conditions that make study extremely difficult and dangerous at times. At the end of the day, I love reminders that there’s still so much to discover, and when I get a chance to throw in a fun pun for the title, well, that’s just the sea bee’s knees!

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Good news! Scientists have made progress on safely destroying PFAS!

For those who don’t know, PFAS are a category of so-called Forever Chemicals:

  • They can be found in many everyday products – outdoor clothing and equipment, textiles, paints, food packaging, photographic coatings, non-stick coatings on cookware as well as fire-fighting foam.
  • They can have harmful effects on human and animal health and stay in the environment and in our bodies for long periods of time where they can increase in concentration. They are often referred to as “forever chemicals”.
  • Some PFAS have been linked to an increased risk of cancer, high cholesterol, reproductive disorders, hormonal disruption (also known as endocrine disruption) and weakening of the immune system.
  • Human and environmental exposure to PFAS can arise from contaminated water and food, PFAS-containing consumer products, household dust and air as well as the reuse of PFAS contaminated sewage sludge as fertiliser resulting in PFAS pollution in soil and crops.

The most recent headline that drew attention was the fact that even the rain is contaminated with this shit.

This is one of the many forms of cleanup we need to do, if we want to take our reliance on nature, not to mention public health, seriously. As with plastic (which is now eaten by several kinds of bacteria), there’s been a fear that these PFAS will continue building up indefinitely, bringing new, and potentially devastating health problems to all life on Earth. That’s still a valid concern, in my opinion, but now researchers at UCLA and Northwestern have developed a method to break down at least some of these chemicals.

Northwestern chemistry professor William Dichtel and doctoral student Brittany Trang noticed that while PFAS molecules contain a long “tail” of stubborn carbon-fluorine bonds, their “head” group often contains charged oxygen atoms, which react strongly with other molecules. Dichtel’s team built a chemical guillotine by heating the PFAS in water with dimethyl sulfoxide, also known as DMSO, and sodium hydroxide, or lye, which lopped off the head and left behind an exposed, reactive tail.

“That triggered all these reactions, and it started spitting out fluorine atoms from these compounds to form fluoride, which is the safest form of fluorine,” Dichtel said. “Although carbon-fluorine bonds are super-strong, that charged head group is the Achilles’ heel.”

But the experiments revealed another surprise: The molecules didn’t seem to be falling apart the way conventional wisdom said they should.

To solve this mystery, Dichtel and Trang shared their data with collaborators Houk and Tianjin University student Yuli Li, who was working in Houk’s group remotely from China during the pandemic. The researchers had expected the PFAS molecules would disintegrate one carbon atom at a time, but Li and Houk ran computer simulations that showed two or three carbon molecules peeled off the molecules simultaneously, just as Dichtel and Tang had observed experimentally.

The simulations also showed the only byproducts should be fluoride — often added to drinking water to prevent tooth decay — carbon dioxide and formic acid, which is not harmful. Dichtel and Trang confirmed these predicted byproducts in further experiments.

“This proved to be a very complex set of calculations that challenged the most modern quantum mechanical methods and fastest computers available to us,” Houk said. “Quantum mechanics is the mathematical method that simulates all of chemistry, but only in the last decade have we been able to take on large mechanistic problems like this, evaluating all the possibilities and determining which one can happen at the observed rate.”

Li, Houk said, has mastered these computational methods, and he worked long distance with Trang to solve the fundamental but practically significant problem.

The current work degraded 10 types of perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCAs) and perfluoroalkyl ether carboxylic acids (PFECAs), including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The researchers believe their method will work for most PFAS that contain carboxylic acids and hope it will help identify weak spots in other classes of PFAS. They hope these encouraging results will lead to further research that tests methods for eradicating the thousands of other types of PFAS.

This is good news. As with plastic pollution, having the means to destroy these chemicals is not a substitute for cutting off the source of the pollution, but every bit of cleanup that we know is possible reinforces the fact that we can make things better. Our vast collective knowledge really does mean that we can change what we do and how we do it. I also like that the ingredients required are ones that should be accessible to any nation on Earth, so it won’t require expensive, high-tech facilities. This seems like something that pretty much any water treatment plant in the world could set up, for a pretty reasonable cost. Just a couple weeks ago, it was looking like we were gonna be stuck with PFAS in our food, water, and bodies. It may be that you and I, dear reader, will never be rid of the stuff, but we’re very close to having the means to stop the buildup, even if we can’t yet force corporations to stop making it. I want to end with a quote from near the beginning of the press release, because I find the potential scalability of this reaction very encouraging:

In a paper published today in the journal Science, the researchers show that in water heated to just 176 to 248 degrees Fahrenheit, common, inexpensive solvents and reagents severed molecular bonds in PFAS that are among the strongest known and initiated a chemical reaction that “gradually nibbled away at the molecule” until it was gone, said UCLA distinguished research professor and co-corresponding author Kendall Houk.

The simple technology, the comparatively low temperatures and the lack of harmful byproducts mean there is no limit to how much water can be processed at once, Houk added. The technology could eventually make it easier for water treatment plants to remove PFAS from drinking water.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Fun direct action against corporate energy waste

It’s been said before that the French have a lot to teach U.S.ians about protesting. For all folks back home love to claim that the United States is “the land of the free and the home of the brave”, to quote our obnoxious national anthem, it seems to take a lot more for people to take to the streets. What’s more, those few who do directly fight back when the police attack tend to be condemned as a radical minority that “goes too far”.

For contrast, here’s French firefighters responding to police attempts to put down their fight for better treatment:

Now, we’ve got another bit of direct action that’s available to anyone with the requisite athletic ability, and doesn’t even require fighting police.

Have you ever walked through a city at night, and noticed lots of business signs are still lit up, even though the businesses are closed?

Have you ever thought about how much electricity is wasted, and carbon dioxide emitted, just to keep those lights on?

Does it feel like the status quo has us begging our overlords to let us save ourselves, while being forced to watch them keep screwing us over because they can’t be bothered to act like decent human beings?

Well, a group of French activists are once again showing us the way, in an action that is not only direct and effective, but I would say is also rather hard to argue is doing any harm that would merit a societal reprimand.

They’re unplugging or switching off those signs.

Honestly, I only see one downside – it seems like this might save money for the businesses in question, and they’ve already demonstrated that they don’t deserve to have that money. This is right up there with wheatpasting or tearing down fascist propaganda (always use your keys, they sometimes hide razors behind their posters) as a method of direct action that’s within reach of most people.

Being able to do parkour obviously makes this sort of thing easier and faster (speed is important if you’re doing something and you don’t want to have unpleasant conversations), but it seems like careful use of a long stick or slower climbing could work just as well.

As I keep saying, the people in charge, at every level, very clearly don’t see climate change as an emergency. They don’t seem to feel any urgency about it at all, except perhaps for some concern over how they’ll keep the rabble in line as climate change starts killing us off.

Businesses and governments have been chiding us for years for not turning our lights off enough, and I think it’s past time to turn that advice back on them.

 

Video: Hard work is a grift.

Hey, so because of personal reasons I’ve had trouble writing the past couple days. It is very fortuitous that Thought Slime put up this video today. I’m about 2 minutes in, and this feels uncomfortably like a description of me, or at least some aspects of my life. At around 4 minutes, it just starts describing my work process, which feels a little rude to do without consulting me first! Fortunately, this video is about more than how my brain works (and nobody else’s). It’s about the concept and history of “laziness” in general, and how it just destroys people; not in isolation, but in conjunction with everything else in society.