Fallout London

 Computer Games, Personal  No Responses »
Dec 212024
 

For years now, one of my favorite pastimes when I needed some downtime was to play one of the Fallout games. I still cannot decide if I like Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas more. Fallout 4 would be less likable, except that it has settlement building which gives the game a whole new dimension. I know, I know, building settlements is not every gamer’s cup of tea, but I enjoy it.

But then, there are the extensions. And no, I do not mean the “official” DLCs (downloadable contents) that are provided by the game publisher, but rather, the “mods” that are offered by third parties, individuals and groups of enthusiasts alike. Mods can improve a game, fix bugs, add to the experience, but in the case of the Fallout games, they reached a whole new level: Some mods rival the DLCs, or perhaps even surpass them.

Take Fallout New California. Years in the making, this mod rivals in size the very game itself, Fallout New Vegas, that it extends. Set years before the events of New Vegas, it puts the player in the shoes of a young protagonist who grew up in a Vault, only to find himself out there in the western wastelands of the New California Republic, amidst rival factions and a deadly search for some disastrous pre-war technology. The mod is just amazing: a main quest that retains some of the trademark moral ambiguity that always characterized Fallout, numerous side quests, a richly textured world, a memorable radio station from Sandy Hills, unique companions… What a game! And it seamlessly transitions into New Vegas, providing a robust back story for the player’s later identity as a Courier, and offering some perks and companions that the player can retain.

For a while, I thought New California was it, the new gold standard when it comes to fan-made mods. But then, there were rumors of yet another mod on its way: A mod of Fallout 4, that would be set overseas, in the great city of London, England.

*** WARNING: Some spoilers follow ***

I have now completed Fallout London, and the impression I came away with is that despite its rough edges, despite the fact that it still has numerous small but annoying bugs and suffers from frequent crashes, it nonetheless surpasses even New California in its breadth, depth, originality. And details and nuances! A Big Ben that chimes at 6 AM (yes, six times). A bona fide TARDIS (that, sadly, vanishes the moment you acquire the loot that it offers). A crosswalk at Abbey Road with four permanent shadows, with a pair of round glasses found in the first of the four. A “British Broadcasting Ministry” radio station that is really as pretentiously British as it can be, is just one of three unique in-game radio stations. Not to mention a post-apocalyptic British society with its snobbish Gentry, cannibalistic Beefeaters, mutant Thamesfolk and numerous other factions, in particular those Tommy conscripts who resemble in so many ways the grunts of the NCR military in New Vegas.

Yes, the elephant is in FOLON, too.

Then there’s the voice acting. It is superb, probably the best in all the Fallout universe. And the side quests? That Lovecraftian side journey that you get into after collecting those Cutethulhu dolls feels like a full-blown DLC on its own right, and a very unique and quirky one at that. Oh, and did I mention that you get a canine companion… no, not the lovable Dogmeat but an equally faithful four-legged friend, Churchill the English bulldog? (The human companions are also amazing, with rich, touching backstories.)

But then, I only have one real complaint. Namely that, after having explored all three endings of the main quest line, I concluded, like the computer WOPR in the movie War Games, that the only winning move is not to play. That is, leave the main quest unfinished. Just explore, find every location, turn on all mariner beacons, find all unusual call boxes, read all the writings Sid has to offer… but leave the main quest alone.

Why? Because no matter which side you pick, they destroy London. The London in which you wake up is far from pefect, but it is a functioning city and Westminster is in decent shape. Sure, the city could use more vertical mobility and the Gentry could be a little bit less snobbish and more accommodating, but that’s not what you get with any of the chosen outcomes. Should you side with Smythe, you end up with a city that’s intact but soulless, governed by clones and subject to unethical science experiments. The Fifth Column turn it into a kind of a fascist nightmare. Arthur’s Camelot may have more pleasant intentions, but the end result is nearly the same: Westminster is mostly destroyed, the city is in ruins, and there’s no reason to believe that anyone’s life improved as a result.

So this, then, was my favored outcome: after doing my part, helping Smythe set off an explosion at the tournament in Westminster, after freeing Reggie the crab (against Smythe’s wishes), I just let the phone continue ringing outside the London Aquarium, I avoided visiting the Fifth Column and making friends with Eve at Cable Street, and I also avoided getting better acquainted with Arthur. I now mind my own business, discovering the few remaining locations that I have not yet visited (yes, you can actually get to Blight Crater even without completing the Scylla quest—which I was never offered, due to a bug I believe—if you have the right stats and equipment, and know how to cross the radioactive waters minimizing damage), still finding amazing little details and oddities here and there, like at the Greenwich Observatory that I just finished exploring. And of course I return to my few settlements from time to time, continuing to improve them despite the somewhat broken settlement mechanics in this amazing, astonishing mod.

Or just go back to Westminster, take a taxi ride or board the city’s one remaining functional Underground line. Just for fun. There is something special about being able to ride a subway, some 160 years after global nuclear Armageddon, in one of the most iconic cities of the world, Ol’ Blighty, while listening to a worthy cover of the iconic We’ll Meet Again…

Mind the gap.

 Posted by at 2:07 am

The symmetry of the spacetime metric

 Personal, Physics  No Responses »
Dec 132024
 

\(\renewcommand{\vec}[1]{\boldsymbol{\mathrm{#1}}}\)This is probably my most ambitious paper to date. It’d be a lie to suggest that I was not worried: what am I missing?

Which is why I have to begin by showing my appreciation to the editors of Classical and Quantum Gravity who, rather than dismissing my paper, recognized its potential value and invited no fewer than four reviewers. Much to my (considerable) relief the reviewers seemed to agree: What I am doing makes some sense.

One of my cats, helping me to understand gravity.

What exactly am I doing? Well, as everyone (ok, everyone with at least a casual interest in general relativity) knows, the gravitational field doubles as the metric of spacetime. And we know that the metric is a “symmetric” quantity: the distance from \(A\) to \(B\) is the same as the distance from \(B\) to \(A,\) and this does not change even when the “distance” in question is the spacetime interval, the infinitesimal proper time between neighboring events.

So we treat the metric as symmetric, which greatly simplifies calculations.

Alternatively, we may treat the metric as not symmetric. Einstein spent the last several decades of his life working on a theory using a nonsymmetric metric, which, he hoped, could have led to a unification of the theories of gravitation and electromagnetism. It didn’t.

John Moffat also spent a considerable chunk of his professional life working on his nonsymmetric gravitational theory (NGT). Unlike Einstein, Moffat assumed that the extra degrees of freedom are also gravitational and may lead to a large-scale modification of the expression for gravitational acceleration, potentially explaining riddles like the rotation curves of galaxies.

But herein lies the puzzle. A self-respecting field theory these days is usually written down by way of a Lagrangian density, with the corresponding field equations derived using the so-called action principle. In the case of general relativity, this Lagrangian density is called the Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian. The field that is the subject of this Lagrangian is the gravitational field. Unless we are interested in Einstein’s unified field theory or Moffat’s NGT, we assume that this field has the requisite symmetry that is characteristic of a metric.

Except that at no point do we actually inform the machinery behind the action principle, namely the methods of the calculus of variations, that the field has this property. Rather, in standard derivations we just impose this constraint “by hand” during the derivation itself. This approach is mathematically inconsistent even if it leads to the desired, expected result.

Usually, a restriction that constrains the degrees of freedom of a physical system is incorporated into the Lagrangian using what are called Lagrange-multipliers. Why would we not use a Lagrange-multiplier, then, to restrict the gravitational field tensor so that instead of the 16 independent degrees of freedom that characterize a generic rank-2 tensor in four dimensions, we only have the 10 degrees of freedom of a symmetric tensor?

This is precisely what I have done. Not without consternation: After all, no lesser a mathematician than David Hilbert chose not to do this, even though he was very much aware of the technique of Lagrange-multipliers and their utility, which he took advantage of in other contexts while working on relativity theory.

Yet, for 109 years and counting, the symmetry of the metric, though assumed, was never incorporated into the standard Lagrangian formulation of the theory. I honestly don’t know why, but I decided to address this by introducing a Lagrange multiplier term:

\begin{align}
{\cal S}_{\rm grav}=\frac{1}{2\kappa}\int d^4x \sqrt{-g}(R-2\Lambda+\lambda^{\mu\nu}g_{[\mu\nu]}).
\end{align}

There. Variation with respect to this nondynamical term \(\lambda^{\mu\nu}\) yields the constraint, \(g_{[\mu\nu]}=0\). Job done. Except… Except that as a result of introducing this term, Einstein’s field equations are slightly modified, split into two equations as a matter of fact:

\begin{align}
R_{\mu\nu}-\tfrac{1}{2}Rg_{\mu\nu}+\Lambda g_{\mu\nu} &{}= 8\pi G T_{(\mu\nu)},\\
\lambda_{[\mu\nu]} &{}= 8\pi GT_{[\mu\nu]}.
\end{align}

The first of these two equations is just the usual field equation, but with a twist: The stress-energy tensor on the right-hand side is explicitly symmetrized.

But the second! That’s where things get really interesting. The nondynamical term \(\lambda_{[\mu\nu]}\) is unconstrained. That means that the antisymmetric part of \(T_{\mu\nu}\) can be anything. To quote a highlighted sentence from my own manuscript: “Einstein’s gravitational field is unaffected by the antisymmetric part of a generalized stress-energy-momentum tensor.“

Or, to put it more bluntly, the gravitational field does not give a flying fig about matter spinning or rotating. How matter spins or does not spin would be determined by the properties of that matter; gravity does not care.

This was a surprising, potentially profound result. Previously, authors tried to account for the presence of nonvanishing rotation by introducing a variety of tensor formalisms ad hoc. But as my derivation shows, perhaps all that was unnecessary. Matter is free to rotate, insofar as gravity is concerned: the stress-energy tensor does not need to be symmetrical.

Is this result really new? How can that be? What am I missing? These were my thoughts when I submitted my manuscript. Who knows… maybe, just maybe I was not spouting nonsense and stumbled upon something of real importance.

I expect my paper to appear on the pages of CQG in due course [edit: it just did]; I now also submitted the manuscript to arXiv, where it should appear I hope this weekend or early next week.

 Posted by at 4:04 pm

Murder is not the answer

 Crime, Health, Politics  2 Responses »
Dec 112024
 

Many expressed support, perhaps even admiration for the young man who killed the Brian Thompson, the CEO of the insurance company UnitedHealthcare last week. The reason: the company is universally despised, notorious for the zeal with which it denies claims or makes life otherwise difficult for insured Americans.

However, therein lies the problem. The company is doing EXACTLY WHAT IT IS EXPECTED TO DO. Apologies for the all caps but I need to stress: Commercial companies are not charities. They do not exist to make life easy or pleasant for their customers. They have one goal and one goal only: MAXIMIZE SHAREHOLDER VALUE. Within the confines of the law of course, but not confined by anything else. In particular, not confined by compassion, empathy, or social responsibility.

Brian Thompson did exactly what he was supposed to do as the CEO of a commercial company: he did his best to maximize shareholder value. Had he acted otherwise: had he chosen to place his personal values ahead of his duties as CEO, he could have been held even criminally liable, for failing to act in the interests of his company’s shareholder.

Yet for this, he was killed.

One may wonder: Don’t Americans deserve better? But that’s the wrong question. Health care is not something that is “given” to Americans by some higher power. The health care system—in particular, a for-profit health care system dominated by private insurers—is what a majority of Americans repeatedly CHOSE to have. Many of them speak disparagingly of the single payer, universal health care systems that exist in various forms here in Canada, in the United Kingdom, or in the European Union. “Socialist medicine,” they tell us, exaggerating the systems’ shortcomings while glossing over one basic fact: No one is left without necessary medical care in either Canada or Europe, and no one is going bankrupt due to unexpected, astronomical medical expenses.

In the end, Mr. Thompson was murdered for doing precisely what he was supposed to do: faithfully managing a FOR PROFIT corporation to the benefit of its shareholders. And the system remains the same. Nothing changes, except that health care might end up being a tad more expensive in the future, because now there will be the added expense associated with higher life insurance premiums and personal bodyguards for insurance company top brass.

 Posted by at 1:40 am

My pearl of wisdom for this fine Sunday

 Humor, Personal  No Responses »
Dec 082024
 
  • When you are five years old, you do as you’re told by adults. Adults know what they’re doing.
  • When you are twenty-five, you do what you want to do. After all, you’re an adult who knows what he is doing.
  • When you are forty-five, you wonder: Some of these people who are supposedly adults… don’t they know what they’re doing?
  • When you are sixty-five, you look in the mirror and ask: I am supposedly an adult. Why don’t I know what I’m doing?

Oh, did I mention that I am just a few years shy of 65?

 Posted by at 5:52 pm

Another step…

 History, Politics  2 Responses »
Dec 022024
 

Today I read the first few words of an article in The New Yorker: “Biden’s Pardon of Hunter Further Undermines…”

For the briefest of moments I saw a ray of hope. Perhaps The New Yorker‘s writers realized what really is at stake? Perhaps they were concerned about the trends undermining the rule of law?

Sadly, no. The missing expression (the title was truncated to fit into the column display presented by my e-mail program) was “… His Legacy”. That’s all they were concerned about. Biden’s legacy. The broader context: tactical victories and defeats in the never-ending political warfare in the United States.

One of my cats, mourning the rule of law…

Watching polarized American politics in recent years, it was evident that both sides were consumed by ideology and the desire to defeat the opposing side. Republicans were busy building an anti-establishment creed along with the alarming personality cult of Trump; meanwhile, Democrats have gone overboard with woke nonsense, from cancel culture to fights over pronouns to defunding the police. Republicans went out of their way to “own the Libs”, while Democrats strived to end the “white supremacist patriarchy”. However, there was one crucial difference: By and large (and notwithstanding Republican accusations about “weaponizing” the government), the Democrats mostly played by the rules, i.e., they supported the rules-based system of the American Republic, whereas Republicans declared the system itself, the “deep state”, their key enemy. As January 6, 2020 demonstrated, they were quite willing to step outside the boundaries of the rule of law to have their way.

This, of course, put Democrats at a disadvantage, akin to fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.

But now, I think, this is about to change. Call it Joe Biden’s “fuck you” moment: he decided to use his presidential powers to pardon his own son, Hunter Biden, despite repeated assurances that he had no plans to do so.

I really cannot blame him. When the president-elect is a convicted felon, when many of his nominees for key positions are themselves at the very least the targets of credible accusations of criminal behavior, I suspect Biden had enough, playing by the rules. (Technically speaking it is of course not against the rules for the President to pardon his own family members, even though it is obviously a massive conflict of interest.)

This, I think, is a pivotal, watershed moment, however. By pardoning Hunter, Biden basically declared that the rules no longer apply to their side either. This seems to be yet another nail in the coffin of the great American experiment. Once again I see historical parallels. Two thousand years ago, it was Brutus and his co-conspirators who decided that the rules no longer apply to them either. Granted, pardoning a family member is not quite on par with assassinating a Dictator, but the undercurrent is the same: The rule of law no longer matters. We may yet be generations away from the leaders of America to openly declare themselves emperors, but this is yet another crucial step towards a system of government in which the “first among equals”, the country’s head of state and head of government, is not really an equal anymore but someone entirely above the law.

One of the secrets of the success of the Roman Empire was the fact that the first emperor, Gaius Octavius, better known by the family name he adopted and the title bestowed upon him by the Roman Senate as Augustus Caesar, was truly competent. I don’t expect competence from Trump. However, is VP, J. D. Vance, is another matter. That gentleman seems frighteningly intelligent and ruthless. Makes me wonder if he is, in fact, going to become the de facto first emperor of an emerging imperial United States of America; our modern-day Octavius.

Oh well, interesting times. Love it, to be honest. Things are about to get really… fascinating.

 Posted by at 10:46 pm

A new low

 Science  3 Responses »
Nov 162024
 

For many years now, I’ve been receiving regular invitations from low-quality, predatory journals to contribute papers.

Needless to say, I didn’t.

But today, it reached a new low. I was offered, in exchange for the princely sum of $30, “authorship positions” in any one of a set of 19 papers.

Holy macaroni. Or whatever.

The esteemed journal in question that is inviting me to throw away any semblance of scientific ethics just to have my name appear… somewhere, calls itself the International Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Journal. Several paragraphs later in the e-mail I learn the…

List of Ready Paper

1. Advances in Dark Energy Research: Understanding the Mystery of the Accelerating Universe
2. Progress in Dark Matter Research: Bridging Observations and Theoretical Insights
3. A Review on Advances in Gravitational Waves Research
4. Recent Advances in the Cosmic Microwave Background Research: A Review
5. Galaxy Formation and Evolution: Progress in Recent Research
6. Computational Astrophysics Research: Review of the Recent Progress and Future Directions
7. Heavy-Ion Studies Research: Current Progress and Future Directions
8. Advances and Future Directions in Cosmic Ray Research: A Comprehensive Review
9. Gravitational Lensing: Review of Recent Progress and Future Directions
10. Advances in Black Hole Research and Future Directions: A Review
11. Exoplanet: Recent Developments and Future Directions: A Review
12. Recent Advances in Galaxy Formation Research and Future Developments
13. Galaxy Clusters: A comprehensive Review of Recent Developments
14. Recent Advances and Future Directions of Solar Physics Research
15. Recent Advances in Astrophysical Magnetism and the Interstellar Medium Research
16. A Review of Interstellar Black Holes: Navigating the Invisible
17. Recent Advances in Star Formation Theories: A Comprehensive Review
18. A Review of Recent Progress in Supermassive Black Holes and Galaxy Formation Research
19. Advances in Neutron Stars and Pulsars Research: Recent Progress and Future Directions

Yes, I’ve said it before, scientific publishing is in a crisis: flooded with low quality research, in need of qualified reviewers, stuck between two contradictory business models (subscription-based vs. open access publishing) and facing a deluge of for-profit, predatory publishers. But this represents a new low even within that dismal landscape.

 Posted by at 12:06 am

To my liberal friends

 History, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 092024
 

In the days following Tuesday’s historic US elections, I’ve seen many reactions by liberals: friends, acquaintences, public figures like journalists.

With few exceptions, almost all of them appear to have jumped to the wrong conclusions. “Putin won this election,” they said. “Harris should have focused on immigration,” they told us. “We underestimated the stupidity,” they complained. “They’re all Nazis,” I’m told.

Nope. Trump voters are not stupid. It was not Russian propaganda that decided the outcome. You won’t shame them into voting Democrat by comparing them to the Nazis. Nor did the result have anything to do with any specific tactical decisions by the Democratic campaign.

This election—which may have tragic, historic consequences concerning the stability and viability of the Western world order that dominated the planet and ushered in an unprecedented period of relative peace and prosperity in the wake of 1945—was decided by factors that were known to Aristotle more than 2500 years ago.

Portrait of Aristoteles. Copy of the Imperial era (1st or 2nd century) of a lost bronze sculpture made by Lysippos

“Now in all states there are three elements: one class is very rich, another very poor, and a third in a mean,” he writes in Politics*. “It is admitted that moderation and the mean are best,” he continues, warning us that when the very rich and the very poor dominate over the mean, “thus arises a city, not of freemen, but of masters and slaves, the one despising, the other envying“.  This leads him to his key conclusion: “But a city ought to be composed, as far as possible, of equals and similars; and these are generally the middle classes. Wherefore the city which is composed of middle-class citizens is necessarily best governed; they are, as we say, the natural elements of a state. And this is the class of citizens which is most secure in a state, for they do not, like the poor, covet their neighbours’ goods; nor do others covet theirs, as the poor covet the goods of the rich.”

And look at our world in 2024. Throughout the Western hemisphere, the middle class is in retreat. Despite the rise in GDP, incomes remain stagnant, barely keeping up with inflation, if that. Housing prices are skyrocketing, making home ownership an unattainable dream for much of the younger generation; even renting a decent home is beyond the reach of many. The wage and income gaps are both on the rise, even as the streets fill up with the homeless, public infrastructure is often crumbling, healthcare systems are under stress and often near the breaking point, even public transportation fails to deliver far too often.

Now you might think that these issues should be top priority for political forces that occupy the left of the political palette. After all, traditionally it’s those on the left who championed these causes, worked in favor of a strong middle class. Not anymore. Even when the left’s agenda is not saturated by woke virtue signaling about pronouns, DEI education, divisive identity politics and other forms of self-serving activism, they failed to address the very concerns that drove far too many voters to vote for Trump. They also missed the elephant in the room: The issues are not specific to the United States. The rise of authoritarians like Orban of Hungary, the success of Brexit, the election of right-wing leaders elsewhere in Europe, the rise of the far-right in Germany are all pointing in the same direction.

Calling Trump voters stupid, racist, fascists is not helpful. Perhaps there were stupid, racist fascists voting for Trump, but the vast majority who voted for him were none of the above. They were concerned citizens, deeply disappointed with the lack of solutions coming from the left. Perhaps they underestimated the dangers represented by a Trump who openly indicated his willingness to weaken democratic institutions, who openly declared the institutions of the American Republic the enemy. Time will tell.

However, the left had a clear path ahead: forget identity politics, virtue signaling, cancel culture, and other forms of radical activism, intolerance in the name of tolerance, illiberal means to enforce the made-up standards of woke liberalism. Focus instead on the issues that matter, promoting real solutions to the problems plaguing the middle class. Because if you don’t, someone else will… or at least they will pretend to do so. And that’s exactly what right-wing populists do.

Perhaps folks on the left should spend a tad more time reading Aristotle.

In case Aristotle is not enough, here’s my collection of posts on Trump 2.0. I collect them here so that I can easily direct folks to this post rather than explain all over again what I think. Anyhow, I still recommend Aristotle over my own pearls of wisdom.

And now that we’re done with this political nonsense, let me go back and do useful things.

*Translation by H. W. C. Davis, Oxford, At the Clarendon Press, 1908
 Posted by at 5:14 pm

Bark vs. bite

 History, Politics  2 Responses »
Nov 062024
 

Earlier tonight, I heard a Republican strategist on CBC News telling us not to worry if Trump wins: his bark is worse than his bite.

Damn, I hope he is right. But historical precedents suggest otherwise. I am, of course, especially reminded of how Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933; many who supported him were also convinced that his bark was worse than his bite.

Well, it wasn’t. The rest, as they say, is history.

As a matter of fact, perhaps I am an alarmist, but I tend to think of something else after the spectacle tonight. It is what became perhaps the most iconic moment from the entire Star Wars franchise: the recognition by Padmé Amidala of what just happened when the Galactic Senate granted extraordinary powers to chancellor Palpatine.

Coming back from the land of science-fiction cautionary tales to that of real history: In early August 1914, Sir Edward Grey, Britain’s foreign secretary remarked that the lights were going out all over Europe. Today… well, America was called by the late Ronald Reagan the shining city on the hill of liberal democracy. The lights of this great shining city might have been extinguished tonight. There are other lights of liberal democracy still shining brightly, including the lights here in Canada, but they are much less powerful and rapidly diminishing in number. Liberal democracy, which has always been an outlier in the course of human history, is now fully in retreat.

And, well, I daresay many who call themselves “liberals” bear at least some responsibility. Over the past few decades, life for many in the Western world stagnated or became worse. Incomes barely kept up with inflation, homes became unaffordable. The income and wealth gap between rich and poor rose. Families could no longer promise their children a life that, never mind better, would be at least as good as the lives of their parents. Public infrastructure was often neglected, health care systems remained underfunded. Many Western cities saw a palpable rise in homelessness and visible poverty: Just look at the number of homeless right here on the main streets of downtown Ottawa, minutes from Parliament Hill.

Leaders and activists on the left had ample chance to step in, offer and, if in power, implement real, forward-looking solutions. Instead, they chose to focus on, ahem, the “important” problems of the day: proper pronouns for everyone, DEI programs at workplaces, stamping out white supremacism in math education (I kid you not! Wish it was a joke) and other pressing issues. In light of that, why is anyone surprised that populism won the day?

Sadly I am not. Much as I rooted for Harris, I predicted a Trump victory, and it appears that I was not wrong.

Now we get a chance to find out if that CBC analyst was right after all. Is the bark worse than the bite? I’m not holding my breath…

 Posted by at 3:20 am

On my own…

 Aviation, Cats, Personal  2 Responses »
Oct 302024
 

My beautiful wife is about to leave the North American continent behind, visiting her Mom in Hungary.

The house feels a bit empty already. The cats are unusually quiet and subdued, too.

 Posted by at 8:11 pm

Tomorrow belongs to me…

 Film, History, Music, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 302024
 

Here’s a pro-Trump view of the recent Trump rally, shared by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in his October 30 “Global Briefing” newsletter:

Americans are tired of living in survival mode. Raging wars, a crippled economy, an immigration crisis, a growing chasm of political division, and rapid inflation have made Americans realize that they want joy again, they want unity again, and they want to dream again. Standing in such a significant arena, surrounded by a sea of red hats and adoring, cheering Trump fans, I couldn’t help but get emotional about how historic this moment in time is for our country. I was 14 years old when Trump was elected president and have, like many of his other supporters, been forced to deal with the vitriol, insults, and hatred of the left over the past eight years. It has often been tiresome to stand up for my own beliefs in the face of such fierce adversity. But watching Trump on that glorious stage at Madison Square Garden reminded me—reminded all Americans—of what lies ahead with a Trump presidency: hope. And that is always worth fighting for.

To say that these words — honest, heartfelt no doubt — give me the creeps is the understatement of the year. What these words actually remind me of is this immortal scene from the film Cabaret:

Yes, they were earnest. Their feelings were true. And that’s what makes this scene one of the most disturbing scenes ever in movie history.

 Posted by at 6:28 pm

Yes, it’s the economy, stupid

 Politics  No Responses »
Oct 282024
 

Recently, a friend of mine remarked on the fact that Americans are disillusioned with Democrats, despite the fact that the US economy is doing splendidly well.

It is true. The productivity of the US economy is nothing short spectacular.

Trouble is… it’s not helping families. This Wikipedia chart tells the story (though there are many other, similar charts, comparing family wealth, incomes, and other measures of inequality).

What this chart tells us is that the living standards of typical American families have been stagnant for a quarter century or more. No matter what they do, they are stuck. Their lives are not getting any better, even as America produces one billionaire after another, with some of them, like Musk, predicted to become trillionaires within the next decade or two.

Yes, American voters are concerned about the economy. But the economy they’re concerned about is not the economy that is reflected by macroeconomic statistics like GDP growth. They are concerned about the economies of their own families. What they can afford. Can they buy a house. Can they replace an aging vehicle.

And increasingly, they cannot. Median family wealth is stagnant while housing prices rise. Tuition fees rise, along with student debt. Things are not getting any better, and in particular, parents cannot promise their children a life better than their own.

This is a hotbed for populism, of course. They sound the battle cry: Kick out those immigrants! Erect trade barriers! Lower those taxes! Well, guess who benefits when that happens:

After all, when the bottom half of Americans are not doing well, the perfect solution is to lower the taxes for tycoons and captains of industry, right? Because of… I don’t know, trickle down? Or just blame yourself for your own misfortune?

So well, yes, it’s the economy, stupid. But make sure you read the right economic statistics. The numbers that actually reflect the realities of life of most Americans.

 Posted by at 12:39 am

How I learned to stop worrying and love Trump…

 History, Politics  1 Response »
Oct 242024
 

No, I did not suddenly have a change of heart concerning Trump’s likely victory and the resulting, unprecedented subversion of American democracy that I expect to see.

I just turned full-blown cynic.

I am, after all, 61 years old with no children to worry about. Even if I remain healthy for a long time to come, the bulk of my life is very obviously behind me, not ahead of me. And I lived that life during an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity, unique in the history of humanity. (No, not perfect. But unprecedented and unique in extent and duration.) I never knew hunger, never had existential fears, never was deprived of my most basic rights. So who am I to complain?

But now, things are about to get exciting. No, not in a good way, but exciting nonetheless. And as I said multiple times in the past, Trump is but a symptom. Even if he loses this election, the underlying causes remain. Rising inequality. A stagnant middle class. Worsening living standards, the inability to offer the new generation a better life, or at least a life comparable to that of their parents. Social tensions reignited, often by opportunistic activists who’d rather see the wounds fester (so they can profit from them) than heal. None of these go away even if Trump drops dead tomorrow. And it transcends the United States. The issues exist here in Canada, throughout Europe and elsewhere. Regimes opposed to the very concept of liberal democracy are taking notice, and playing this to their advantage.

What will be the ultimate outcome? A major war is a near certainty, in my opinion. Collapse of many democracies is likely, with the exception of those few that have within them the will to reform, and also have the ability to protect their borders. The collapse of the global, interconnected economy will bring insane suffering and only play into the hands of future autocrats.

Illustration by DALL-E

I have no idea when the proverbial poo will collide with the ventilator. But collide it will, and it will happen sooner, rather than later. I don’t think the world has been this close to the brink at any moment in my lifetime, anytime since 1945 as a matter of fact. But now I no longer fear that future. Rather, I have become mighty curious. It is, after all, not every day that one gets a chance to witness such a monumental moment in history, something on the scale of the collapse of the Roman Republic, at the very least.

 Posted by at 12:17 am

Fallout Day

 Computer Games, History  1 Response »
Oct 232024
 

Today is October 23.

In my native Hungary, they’re celebrating the 68th anniversary of the failed 1956 anti-Soviet revolution, which began on this day.

Elsewhere in the world, this is Fallout Day. In the universe of the Fallout game franchise, the Great War that ended civilization began (and also concluded) on October 23, 2077.

I asked DALL-E and Midjourney both to produce an image. Midjourney created several images and I loved most of them but in the end, I am opting in favor of this DALL-E image after all. Its serenity captures the atmosphere of the game better: we are, after all, centuries after the catastrophe, in a mostly quiet, abandoned Wasteland.

Also, while the famous Power Armor may be an iconic in-game accessory, a wanderer wearing little more than a thin Vault jumpsuit better captures the vulnerability a player feels, especially when entering the Wasteland for the first time.

I hope sights like this remain firmly in the realm of computer game fiction. Well, as much as possible… some of the sights that we’ve seen from Ukraine in the past two and a half years unfortunately come close.

 Posted by at 9:26 pm

Old school technical support

 Computers, Internet, Personal  3 Responses »
Oct 202024
 

I was messing with a backup server, which failed to work properly after an update. I just finished what I was doing when a call came from a strange phone number. The chap introduced himself as calling on behalf of Bell Canada, and I almost hung up (way too many phony calls!) but I am glad I didn’t: this time, the call was legit, and it concerned my Bell ADSL network connection, a service that is a bit old, a bit slow, but ultra-reliable, which is, well, the reason why I am relying on it!

He was wondering why my connection is down. I was surprised: granted, I have a higher-speed (but a tad less reliable) backup connection through Rogers so I would not lose connectivity, but still, my monitoring scripts would have warned me if there was trouble with the Bell line. But then I checked: and indeed, a few minutes prior, the Bell ADSL connection was down for a duration of about two minutes.

And they called! As it turned out, they were not sure if the connection was back up, because they were trying to ping an IP address that was not responding. We quickly sorted that out, and the chap recorded to correct IP address for the Bell equipment itself, to make sure that they know which box they ping. But we were both wondering exactly what triggered the problem in the first place.

Now I know. The backup server I was messing with at one point came up with the wrong IP addresses, conflicting with my primary server. Having two boxes with the same IP address likely confused the Bell ADSL router, which then reset itself. This is probably what they saw on their end.

But the fact that they noticed it before I did? That I received a call from a competent professional within minutes, alerting me to the problem and eager to solve it?

That’s almost unheard of, these days. My opinion of Bell Canada just went up several, several notches. This is true old school customer care. What can I say? Bravo. That VPC (virtual private circuit) ADSL line is not the cheapest, but it’s well worth the price with this level of service.

Addendum: The problem was resolved a day later. I believe it was caused by a Bell Canada residential technician, who disconnected our canceled landline service two days prior, and accidentally/carelessly hooked up some wires to the terminals that belonged to the ADSL line. So maybe my opinion of that technician is not that great. However, the business service technicians were great. Not only did they notice the problem before I did, they proactively called, addressed the problem, sent a technician… and when the technician actually called, he called only to tell me that he’d not even come to my premises, because he already identified and solved the problem, and has been monitoring the line for the preceding 30 minutes, confirming its stability.

 Posted by at 4:43 pm

History books to come

 History, Politics  4 Responses »
Oct 172024
 

First, let me express my unbridled optimism: Yes, there will be history books in the future. I hope.

What will they say about our present time? Nothing encouraging, I fear.

They’ll note the date October 17, 2024, as the date when Ukraine basically presented a nuclear ultimatum: If the country is not welcome into NATO, at some point in the future it may very well rearm itself with nuclear weapons. Which, arguably, it has every right to do, since 30 years ago Ukraine gave up what was then the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for supposedly robust security guarantees by, among other states, the Russian Federation.

In unrelated news, several days ago there was a minor earthquake registered in the Dnipro region of Ukraine. Which, incidentally, supposedly coincides with some old Soviet weapons testing grounds. Or not. Ukrainians say the epicenter was several kilometers below the surface and the world is not alarmed. Still…

One of Midjourney’s suggestions for the cover of a future history book

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is gaining. If I had to bet my money, I’d bet on him winning in November. The consequences will likely be catastrophic, both for democracy within the American Republic and for NATO and the broader Western democratic alliance.

In my country of birth, Hungary, Orban continues to reign supreme. And he’s no longer the outlier in Europe: increasingly, nationalists and authoritarians are gaining elsewhere on the continent.

Elsewhere, China continues its saber-rattling at Taiwan, North Korea now sends soldiers to help Russia, the Middle Eastern conflict widens, there’s even a spat between Canada and India over an Indian assassionation of a Sikh nationalist on Canadian soil not long ago.

In short, let me not mince words about this: The world is fucked up badly, and it’s becoming more and more fucked up each and every passing day.

Meh. I am 61, and I have no children to worry about. So maybe I’ll just lean back and watch the show? It’s about to get really exciting.

But yes, I still hope that there will be future history books.

 Posted by at 11:28 pm

More crazy times

 History, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 112024
 

Recently I invented two nightmare scenarios concerning American politics. Well, how about a third one.

Imagine for a moment that January 20 comes about; preceded by a period of two months loaded with crazy lawsuits, state electoral offices consumed with conspiracy theories, disputed outcomes. Ultimately, a fatally divided Supreme Court with, say, five conservative justices on one side, one conservative with second thoughts (arguably more interested in protecting the US Constitution than granting free reign to Trumpists) and three liberals on the other.

So when the fateful day comes, inauguration, the world witnesses the most alarming spectacle. Even as the five conservatives swear in Trump, across town, the remaining four justices do the same with Harris.

Midjourney does not let me depict Trump or Harris directly, but it was willing to produce this image of competing Roman emperors.

Looking at history as a guide, the outcome will likely not be pretty. There were competing emperors in the history of the Roman Empire, and competing popes in the history of the Catholic Church. The result was often (always?) violence, bloodshed, suffering. We’ve not seen something like this in functioning modern democracies (even the US Civil War as a more, well, orderly business) but I expect the worst.

Unlikely? Thankfully so. Impossible? Not anymore, I think, and that speaks volumes about the times in which we live.

 Posted by at 6:43 pm

To my American friends

 Politics  1 Response »
Oct 062024
 

These days, I tend to avoid politics as much as possible. Sure, I keep myself informed about the facts, but that’s it. I’m not interested in opinions, talking heads, polls, predictions, ideology or propaganda.

But that does not mean that I am not concerned. On the contrary: I am more concerned than I’ve ever been in my 60+ years on this planet. That’s 60+ years of living in fundamentally peaceful, prosperous, safe societies where my basic rights were respected, where I never faced existential concerns like famine or war, where my personal freedoms were never seriously in danger. (Indeed, not even in Kadar’s goulash communism in Hungary, where I grew up.) In other words, the rules-based world of Pax Americana, 79 years and counting.

I am concerned because a second Trump presidency may end it all. Here you have a person—a bitter, deeply flawed, corrupt egotist—who is far more comfortable in the company of dictators (and far more willing to praise them) than among democratic leaders. A person who already telegraphed his intent to abuse the system, to take personal revenge on those who slighted him, to cling to power even by extraconstitutional or unconstitutional means.

In other words, a challenge like no other in the 248-year history of the great United States of America.

How is it even possible? Perhaps because the problems are real. Problems I noted before. The stagnating middle class. Rising inequality. Rising poverty. Homelessness. The bleak future that younger generations face compared to the lives of their parents and grandparents.

There is a political class that feeds off these grievances. Their goal is not to address the problems but to perpetuate them and use them for political gain. This political class exists across the board. It includes rabidly “woke” left-wing activists and it also includes Trump and his loyal entourage promoting his cult of personality. However, there is a crucial difference. The “woke” lot may represent the “radical left” but, radical as they are, they still largely work within the system. Trump and his followers already made it crystal clear that they will not let the law or the US constitution stand in their way. And their tactic is as ancient, as transparent as it is effective.

Note how they talk about election fraud. Note how they talk about “weaponizing government”. Or “weaponizing the justice system”. You might think of these as mere accusations, empty election rhetoric. But it’s a lot more than that. What this propaganda accomplishes is that it normalizes that which they accuse the other side of doing. Never mind that the other side is not actually engaged in election fraud or criminal abuse of governmental powers. It’s enough that Trump’s followers believe (and yes, they truly believe) that it happens. What it accomplishes is simple. Once their side wins, they’ll only do what is right and just, and “return the favor” by, well, engaging in election fraud and weaponizing government. The justification? They’re not doing anything that the other side has not been doing already. It’s only fair. And necessary, even, as they accept the excuses from Trump’s apologists.

This “projection” thus has a clear goal. The current Administration is accused of doing precisely the things that a Trump administration plans to do. And the accusations are really justifications: if the current administration can do it, why can’t we? Keep this in mind as you think about the goals of Trump’s propaganda machine. It’s not about winning over Harris supporters. It’s about convincing their own supporters of the legitimacy of their planned undemocratic, “illiberal” tactics.

And this is why a Trump victory is about far, far more than the ordinary politics of the day, like taxes or abortion rights. It is an existential threat to American democracy.

This is why I feel the need to do something I’ve never done before: I urge my American friends to do the only sensible thing. Hold your noses if you must, but even if you disagree with her on every single issue, vote for Harris. Especially if you live in a “purple” state. Harris may do things you don’t like, but you’ll be able to cast another vote four years from now, and give her the boot. The same is not necessarily true if Trump wins.

And no, do not assume that “it cannot happen here”. It can. This is in fact precisely how great democracies die. This is how the Roman Republic died, this is how the short-lived democratic experiment in Germany known as the Weimar Republic came to an end. This is the recipe that was followed by Putin in Russia, this is the “illiberal democracy” that Orban is promoting in my native Hungary. This is how Erdogan solidified his position in Turkey, and this is what far-right politicians in Europe might try to do, should they gain power. It CAN happen here, and it may very well happen if Trump wins. Put country ahead of party, ahead of partisan politics, ahead of short-term interests. It’s the very idea of the great American Republic that is at stake.

 Posted by at 3:43 pm

Crazy times

 Politics  2 Responses »
Oct 062024
 

The other day, I came up with not one but two rather outlandish political scenarios. Outlandish but, frighteningly, perhaps not altogether implausible. And that alone I think is a sign of the troubled times in which we live.

First scenario: An unholy alliance

Suppose for a moment that Trump wins the election next month, and takes office in January. He of course promised us that he will bring peace to Ukraine. We think we know what it entails: cutting off aid to Ukraine, actively promoting a Putin “peace plan”, forcing Ukraine to surrender, at the very least, a large chunk of its territory if not its independent statehood altogether. Much like Chamberlain’s “peace for our times” that he helped bring about in Munich, in late September 1938, Trump’s peace plan will likely just embolden Russia’s dictator, leading to greater conflict.

But what if reality turns out to be… a tad different?

What if… lo and behold… in the weeks following Trump’s return to the White House, while he is busy carrying out his revenge plan, targeting his opponents, reshaping the Department of Justice, denouncing judges and the media, the fighting in Ukraine quietly subsides. It becomes less intense. Trump then holds an unassuming telephone conversation with Putin. Putin agrees to halt offensive operations, even withdraws some of his forces. Ukrainian opinion is divided but they are war-weary, and territorial concessions, though painful, increasingly seem like a price worth paying in exchange for peace. And perhaps they even receive some powerful guarantees, like an American base near the newly redrawn Ukraine-Russia border. So sometime in 2025, the war ends, in a manner even Ukrainians find at least marginally palatable.

The world celebrates as it watches Trump making a historic visit to Moscow… where, as the details emerge shortly thereafter, he establishes a new coalition with Putin to counter China. And suddenly, we have a whole new Cold War on our hands: a West, united with Russia (the country that, after all, has the most reasons to fear a militarized China — just look at the map to see why) in confrontation with the global South led from Beijing. Putin’s future in the history books as Russia’s Great Dictator is assured, and Russia gets the best security guarantee ever to counter the one real threat alongside its borders, a China with a very large, but aging population, a faltering economy, and insatiable hunger for Siberia’s wealth in natural resources. Trump has been played and, blinded by his oversize ego, he does not even know it.

Where this confrontation leads, I have no idea, but it may very well result in open war on the Asian continent, war on an unprecedented scale.

Second scenario: Et tu, Brute?

We have all seen the performance of JD Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, during the televised VP debate. He was good. He was better than good. He was intelligent, polite, professional, collegial, knowledgeable. In short, he was everything Trump is not, and his calculated, smooth niceness visibly rattled his opponent, Walz.

Caesar by Orson Welles, Mercury Theatre 1937

What JD Vance demonstrated that night was how clever, how smart, how capable, how shrewd and disciplined a politician he really is. And that made me wonder…

Suppose Trump and Vance win in November and occupy the White House in due course in January. For a while, things proceed as expected. Trump begins, as anticipated, by abusing his powers, firing government officials he dislikes, gradually turning law enforcement, the Justice Department into his personal revenge machine against those who may have slighted him. And Trump being Trump, he continues to say the wildest things whenever he gets a chance, in interviews, even on social media.

And Vance waits. He waits for the weaponization of government to become a fait accompli. Most importantly, he waits for Trump to say or do something even crazier than usual, something we all know we can count on Trump doing. And when that happens… That’s when Vance pounces, like a political ambush predator. He “pulls a 25th”. That is to say, in cahoots with his friends in government and Congress, he uses the US Constitution’s 25th amendment to remove Trump from office due to his incompetence.

And there you have it: the 48th President of the United States, JD Vance, inheriting an already badly corrupted machinery of the state thanks to his former boss and predecessor. A machinery that he fully intends to use as he continues the reshaping of America, keeping it as a Republic in name only, not unlike how the Roman Empire maintained the pretense of a republic for centuries after the first “first citizen”, Gaius Octavius, better known as Augustus Caesar, took the stage.

Can it happen? I think so. In fact, I worry that soon enough, we’ll be confronted with a reality far weirder than these scenarios I concocted up. Indeed when you think about it… the very fact that we are discussing not the first but the possible second term of a crooked egotist, a corrupt real estate con artist as the President of the United States would have been considered beyond-the-pale outlandish nonsense as recently as 15, 20 years ago.

 Posted by at 2:39 pm

Imagination

 Canada, History, Hungary, Politics  2 Responses »
Sep 272024
 

Allow me to let my imagination go wild.

Imagine a country in which access to health care — basic health care, no fancy machines, but competent, well-trained professionals — is easy. Want to see a cardiologist? Go to the local clinic, cardiology is on the third floor to the left, present your ID card and within 30 minutes, an assistant will call you by name and you’re talking to a cardiologist. Or any other specialist, for that matter. Oh, and if your child is sick, the pediatrician will make house calls. Free of charge, as all of this is covered by the public health insurance system.

 Imagine emergency services that work. An ambulance system that, barring large-scale natural disasters, does not know the meaning of “level zero”. Emergency rooms that always have the capacity, at least in normal times, to quickly process patients and accommodate them.

 Imagine hospitals that are well staffed and have surplus capacity. In particular, imagine mental hospitals that host many mental patients, including patients who, though not raving lunatics, are nonetheless incapable, for one reason or another, of leading proper lives independently, and would end up homeless, crippled with addictions or worse, if they were not institutionalized.

 Imagine a country with no real homelessness. Sure, if you are in dire straits, you may not be able to find luxury accommodations, but you’ll not be left outside: If nothing else, a shared room will be available in a workers’ hostel or dormitory, with a bed and a wardrobe that you can call your own, but eventually, you might be able to get at least a tiny apartment, not much, just a bedroom, a toilet, a shower and a cooking stove, but still. Your place. One that will not be taken away so long as you pay the subsidized rent and don’t exhibit outrageous behavior.

Female dormitory at a downtown Budapest hostel for construction workers.
Fortepan / Peter Horvath, 1982

 Imagine a merit-based system of tertiary education that does not cost a penny. Institutions that teach valuable skills in the sciences, engineering and the arts, not made-up diplomas that exist only to serve some ideological or political agenda. Institutions that kick you out if you do not meet minimum criteria, fail your exams, fail to complete your assignments.

 Imagine a cheap public transit system that… just works. Reliably. The subway runs 20 hours a day, with all maintenance done, properly completed, during the overnight hours. Buses and trams arriving on time, a system only interrupted on rare occasions by major weather events or large accidents.

 A pipe dream, you say? Maybe… except that what I am describing is the reality in which I grew up, in the goulash communism of behind-the-Iron-Curtain Hungary.

To be sure, things didn’t always work as advertised. There was no homelessness epidemic, but young people often ended up paying through the nose to live in sublet properties, often just a bedroom in someone else’s apartment. The health care system was nominally free, but people felt obligated to pay real money, a “gratitude”, under the table to compensate severely underpaid doctors and other health care professionals.

No, I do not want to pretend that life under communism was great. After all, I “voted with my feet”, leaving behind my country of birth, opting to begin a new life starting with nothing other than the contents of my travel bag and a few hundred dollars in my wallet in 1986. Nonetheless, my description of Kadar-era everyday life in Hungary reflects the truth. That really is the way the health care system, public housing, public transportation or tertiary education simply worked. Worked so well, in fact, we took them for granted.

The fact that these things today, in the capital city of a G7 country, namely Ottawa, Canada, are much more like pipe dreams, much farther away in reality than in Kadar’s communist dictatorship 50 years ago…

Homeless couple in recessed side entrance of Ottawa’s Rideau Centre.
Google Street View, July 2023

The mind boggles. Seriously, what the bleep is wrong with us?

 Posted by at 2:28 am
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