Looks like we could use an open thread and I had this waiting in the wings.
CBS Sunday Morning profiled Ingenuity and the engineers and the pilot who made it possible (you have no idea how much I keep wanting to write “she and her” in regards to Ingenuity). It’s worth a watch if space exploration interests you.
May 5, 2024When NASA added a drone named Ingenuity to its Mars 2020 rover Perseverance, it expected the tiny four-pound helicopter to fly a total of five very brief missions in the thin Martian atmosphere. But Ingenuity far surpassed all expectations, flying dozens of flights before suffering damage to its rotors in January. Correspondent David Pogue reports on how the tiny drone, created from off-the-shelf parts, continued to provide valuable data and images from the Red Planet three years into its mission.
Jan 25, 2024On April 19, 2021, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter made history when it completed the first powered, controlled flight on the Red Planet. It flew for the last time on January 18, 2024. Designed to be a technology demonstration that would make no more than five test flights in 30 days, the helicopter eventually completed 72 flights in just under 3 years, soaring higher and faster than previously imagined. Ingenuity embarked on a new mission as an operations demonstration, serving as an aerial scout for scientists and rover planners, and for engineers ready to learn more about Perseverance’s landing gear debris. In its final phase, the helicopter entered a new engineering demonstration phase where it executed experimental flight tests that further expanded the team’s knowledge of the vehicle’s aerodynamic limits. For more information on Ingenuity, go to: mars.nasa.gov/ingenuity
Here’s the NASA page on Ingenuity: NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission
Curiosity landed on my birthday and since then, I’ve been fascinated by the Mars missions. I love that Ingenuity was the little helicopter that many doubted and exceeded all expectations.
Open thread
Baud
Ingenuity. Voyager. When NASA gets it right, it’s something to behold.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Baud: I wrote before, those folks know how to design for high reliability and remote access.
HumboldtBlue
lowtechcyclist
I remember saying at the time that cats everywhere on Earth celebrated when Curiosity was sent on its mission.
Eunicecycle
It’s The Little Helicopter That Could!
WereBear
The first time I saw the panoramic photos and felt the — shortness? — of the horizon, I grokked what it’s like to stand on another planet.
Citizen Alan
In other news, Bernie Fucking Sanders is running for a fourth term. He is 83yo, he will be 90 at the end of this term if he lives that long, and if he dies in office, Vermont presently has a GOP governor who will pick his replacement. No one on the ProgLeft had better say a goddamned word about Biden’s age where I can hear them.
Jeffro
That last segment of the video, where the Wright Brothers’ flight transforms into Ingenuity…wow.
I get so tired of hearing about the worst of humanity (lookin’ at you, MAGA) that it’s doubly inspiring to see and hear about the best of it. Thanks for sharing, TaMara!
emjayay
Our (and others to a lesser degree) space exploration has been amazing. Multiple landings on Mars and our moon with all kinds of exploration, landing on an asteroid (Japan too I think), checking out the outer planets (or non-planets), etc. Space telescopes and the rest too.
We don’t really get much out of all of it except knowledge despite some thinking mining on the moon or Mars makes any sense.
And all these things rely on everything in complex chains of events going near perfectly. Amazing and worth all the expense.
However Donald’s man on Mars stuff is stupid and just another dream from his boyhood in Forest Hills he has never gotten beyond, just like a lot of other things. “Space Force” too. And Musk’s spacey ideas are the same thing, as stupid as jet speed people filled pods in vacuum tubes. How’s that one going?
Nova on PBS has a lot of great coverage on space stuff too.
dm
@Jeffro: Ingenuity carried a scrap from the Wright Flyer.
Geminid
@HumboldtBlue: That BBC News link is a good one, and leads to half a dozen more articless that give a decent picture of what’s been going on.
I found a summary of the draft ceasefire proposal published by a Lebanese newspaper May 1. It was posted by a reputable security analyst whose name escapes but was included when I posted the draft Saturday evening on Tamara’s afternoon post. There will be more current drafts published if this deal in fact goes through.
The process for the 42-day First Phase was fairly detailed, less so for Phases Two and Three. There’s a lot left out, such as who exactly will be in charge of administration and security in the Gaza Strip, but these are known problems and I think they will be adressed in negotiations that are to start no later than 16 days into the ceasefire.
I won’t mind finding out later; it will be worth the wait if they can just get the ceasefire started. I think the arrangements will track a plan that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Jordan have agreed on and is consistent with US policies. These could be ratified by a Security Council resolution.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
He’ll be 96 at the end is his fifth term.
Chris
@HumboldtBlue:
Saw that. I’m hopeful.
FastEdD
In the fall I’m the OC Director for an engineering contest that JPL runs called the JPL Invention Challenge. I’m a volunteer. Every year we come up with the specs for a new device that the kids build from scratch to compete with the NASA engineers. It is such a delight to see them learning-from each other. The devices perform tasks such as dropping a bowling ball, quickly but gently so it doesn’t break an egg. Building a glider that turns and lands on an X, without any radio control. Making music mechanically, with no electronics. Shooting rolls of TP at a target. Or jelly beans, or tennis balls. I’ve been doing it for 22 years. It is so much fun, and the kids will inspire you with how hard they work and how ingenious they are. Kids these days? They’re alright. It is free to enter and we design the contests so materials won’t be expensive either. Go to jpl.nasa.gov and look for the invention challenge under events.
Jeffro
@dm: super cool – I did not know that!
I love hearing about things like this, whether it’s Ingenuity or the Webb telescope, or any of it. I think it was just a week or two ago that scientists were able to re-establish communications with Voyager 1…which is already outside of our solar system (I don’t count the Oort Cloud, b/c I want to celebrate =)
I mean, that’s it – no going back now, humanity! We’re sending stuff out past
Plutoer Neptune and we’re still talking to it. Time to step up our game here on Earth accordingly!MisterForkbeard
@Citizen Alan: The progleft thinks Bernie sold out. Because he’s endorsed Biden. So they won’t care one way or the other
UncleEbeneezer
Weird…it’s almost like Biden isn’t pro-genocide…
Baud
@MisterForkbeard:
True. One of the lefty labor subreddits is now calling him too old for the first time.
Baud
@Jeffro:
Elitist.
Jackie
@Citizen Alan: Is there a True Democratic also running? Vermont Dems may be ready for a change?
I know nothing about Vermont politics.
Geminid
@Baud: Bernie Sanders is old enough that the Brookly Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles hit him hard, and may have helped form his political outlook.
CliosFanboy
@dm:
as a Dayton native I love that!!!!
Dorothy A. Winsor
Just back from seeing The Fall Guy. It was entertaining, with a tribute to all its stunt people at the end.
Old School
@Citizen Alan:
I’m surprised to hear there were still races for this fall without announced candidates.
Nitpick: Google says Bernie is 82. He’ll turn 83 in September.
Old School
@Jackie:
Ballotpedia says no Democrats are running. They list Bernie Sanders and a Republican (Gerald Malloy).
MazeDancer
David Plouffe is partnering with Kellyanne Conway for a podcast called “The Campaign Managers”.
Completely heartbreaking, horrifying, and wrong.
Democracy is on the line and David has lost his mind
Mr. Bemused Senior
Ingenuity write up from the Planetary Society
MattF
OT. NYT gift link to article on RW ‘non-profit’ funneling contributed money to friends and family of group’s leaders.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Has this been discussed?
“Hamas has tentatively accepted a Gaza cease-fire proposal from Egypt and Qatar. NBC News’ Raf Sanchez reports on the details of the potential deal and what the next steps could be.”
Martin
@Baud: Someone told me he’d be 102 at the end of his sixth. Crazy.
wjca
It is inherent in exploration that the main thing you learn is what might be out there which merits further exploration. Which the last half century plus has provided in spades.
Kosh III
What the frak is wrong with these people!!!!!!
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/it-is-attempted-murder-in-my-opinion-young-pizza-delivery-driver-shot-at-7-times-after-driveway-mix-up
Mr. Bemused Senior
@MattF: they have engaged “high quality professional services.” Yeah, I’ll bet. /s
Jeffro
Hey now, get Oorta here with that kind of talk!
trollhattan
@Citizen Alan: After the DiFi debacle I think it’s perfectly warranted to shout down this kind of self-serving nonsense. Where’s the succession plan?
Geminid
@Geminid: Sanders was a teenager living in Brooklyn when the Dodgers’ ownership took them to LA. He was an athlete who played quarterback and captained James Madison High Schools track team.
Other James Madison H.S. grads include Justice Ruth Ginsberg and Senators Chuck Schumer and Norm Coleman. Fun Coleman facts, per Wikipedia:
wjca
Refusing to count the Oort Cloud isn’t elitist. It’s parochial.
trollhattan
@MazeDancer: They really bonded serving there on the front lines in Bowling Green.
Peke Daddy
trollhattan
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Lord, let it be so. BBC:
Betty Cracker
@MazeDancer: Wow, fuck that guy. I expected better from him for some reason.
wjca
Rabid paranoia. Stoked for decades by the NRA, in aid of selling more guns. And more (although not very) recently by reactionaries in pursuit of election win.
Ken
I’m not saying it’s ritual magic, but I’m not saying it’s not.
Sure Lurkalot
@MazeDancer:
Normalizing a lying grifter (because you shared the same job title)…“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for
CBSmy bank account.”MazeDancer
@Betty Cracker: Maybe that whole electing Mr. Obama thing slanted my formerly supportive view of David Plouffe.
Like Steve Schmidt before him, Plouffe puts a knife in the heart.
He is, however, taking one of the most terrible ratios ever on Twitter. And a comments section full of names big and small saying “WTF, David?”
Citizen Alan
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Out of curiosity, does it reference the 1980’s Lee Majors show at all? I know they’re recycling the theme song.
Ken
Maybe it’s just two and a half billion years of evolution talking, but I parochially prefer environments where oxygen is a gas.
Geminid
@trollhattan: Fifty prisoners for each woman soldier released sounds like a lot. I wonder if that is the number that the Israeli negotiators agreed on, or if Hamas is announcing they’ve accepted Hamas’s own proposal and putting the onus on the Israeli government if they don’t accept it. I guess we’ll find out before too long.
wjca
If it were (working) ritual magic, the first flight would have been substantially shorter. And covered less ground. Just sayin’
MattF
@Sure Lurkalot: Exactly my reaction.
MazeDancer
Well known liberal rag Politico is reporting that Kristi Noem’s “team” wouldn’t let her put the dog killing story in her first book. Even though she wanted to.
To which one must reply, Kristi Noem got a two-book deal??
Citizen Alan
@MisterForkbeard: I remember in 2016 saying that I wished that I could peer into Alternate Universes like the Watcher from MCU and see into a universe where Bernie won the Dem nomination and then, somehow, won the general and became President. Just so that I could see the exact moment the ProgLeft turned on him and declared him worse than the Republicans. I figured 90 days at most but possibly as early as his first Cabinet nomination who wasn’t an actual Communist.
scav
@Kosh III: If only there were real consequences, like being permanently blacklisted by not only every pizza delivery service in the area but also UPS, FedEx and (drumroll) Amazon.
Martin
@MazeDancer: Starbursts
Martin
@scav: And USPS. You want mail, you can rent a PO Box asshole.
CaseyL
@Betty Cracker:
He seems to be a member of a noxious. subspecies: a political consultant who got it right once (Obama 2008), and has been making bank ever since. This subspecies has no discernible ethic other than “Pay me.”
If he has any expertise other than getting very lucky with the candidate and the specific context of 2008 (national economy collapsing, and MCCain clearly not having the slightest idea what to do about that) I am unaware of it.
Bill Arnold
@Ken:
NASA respects Mars, AKA The Eater of Space Probes.
They don’t make their probes Triumph of the Will nationalistic enterprises. (China is doing well, too.)
Old School
@Citizen Alan:
Yes. Spoilers.
scav
@Martin: I wasn’t sure if the semi-govermental aspect of the USPS would allow that. But, if possible! Let’s not forget all those selling Girl Scout cookies too. Cold turkey on the samoas and thin mints.
Jeffro
Ye gods. I sure hope not…this timeline already sucks.
Martin
@scav: They probably can’t, but they should.
UncleEbeneezer
Eyeroller
@wjca: Fscking Ring cameras aren’t helping. Also Nextdoor. I signed up for that, somewhat against my better judgement, hoping for recommendations for handypersons and such, and it’s mostly crime/suspicion/”this vehicle was casing my neighborhood.”
smith
@scav: If there’s any justice, it won’t matter who’ll refuse to deliver to him, because he’ll be in prison.
Uncle Cosmo
@lowtechcyclist: Just remember, if the Mars mission had been conceived in Trump country, we might’ve ended up with a rover named Deliverance and a helicopter called Consanguinity…
Narya
In praise of surgeons and anesthesiologists! In post surgery room, going home in a bit. Anesthesiologist was a total nerd and showed me my brain waves and explained how they worked w the various drugs.
MazeDancer
Bibi has started bombing in Rafah. Reports all over Twitter.
So much for the peace deal.
trollhattan
Poking around the NASA page it looks as though they’ve repurposed Ingenuity for daily data collection from its final landing spot.
trollhattan
@MazeDancer: Nothing will convince me Bibi wants a peace deal. He wants his war, and as a benefit is it helps keep him in office.
rikyrah
Del Quentin Wilber (@DelWilber) posted at 7:12 AM on Mon, May 06, 2024:
Brad Parscale helped Trump win in 2016 using Facebook ads. Now he’s back, and an AI evangelist ….by @AlanSuderman & @garanceburke . First in our series this year on the “AI Campaign.” https://t.co/2XcHPwOJGa
(https://x.com/DelWilber/status/1787455312191984095?s=02)
Steeplejack
@FastEdD:
Cool.
What is “OC” in “OC director”?
FastEdD
@trollhattan: Teddy’s a cool guy.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Citizen Alan: @Old School: I never saw the Lee Majors show so I’m glad Old School dug around and found that link.
rikyrah
Acyn (@Acyn) posted at 1:11 PM on Mon, May 06, 2024:
‘I make no apologies for my administration protecting the rights to organize and bargain collectively. Therefore, I’m vetoing this resolution. Signed sincerely,
Joseph R. Biden Jr.’ https://t.co/omoAXGU2E7
(https://x.com/Acyn/status/1787545862488695295?s=02)
Tony Jay
@trollhattan:
From your mouth to the FSM’s noodley aural-appendages.
The end to the blockade and Israeli troops out of Gaza, massive investment to start rebuilding all of the things the IDF have deliberately destroyed. It’s a good start.
ETA – And with that Netanyahu and Co throw another few thousand civilians on the fire of their Fuck You Festival.
If only those student protests hadn’t forced him to make a statement about the right to self-defence. /s
FastEdD
@Steeplejack: Orange County. We have Orange County and LA County Prelims and the finals are at JPL in Pasadena where the rovers are designed. The contest is open to kids anywhere and sometimes we get teams from Africa and Europe, but mostly it is kids from Southern California.
Jackie
Apparently, per CNN, an American soldier has been arrested for stealing in RUSSIA.
He is stationed in S Korea and went to Russia without notifying his commanders.
First thought; doesn’t sound good. Second thought; What the hell was he thinking?!?!
ETA link: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/us-soldier-detained-russia-officials-say-rcna150928
JWR
@MazeDancer: I was just reading that. Here’s the link in case anyone’s interested:
FastEdD
@Tony Jay: I appreciate your respect for my Pastafarian traditions.
Strippers and beer volcanoes for all! Ramen!
Tony Jay
@Jackie:
Third thought. Smuggling network that Vlad’s secret-police decided it was politically convenient to come down on?
Tony Jay
@FastEdD:
There is only one True God, and Spicy Duck is Their Flavouring.
tam1MI
The Right set a trap for the college protestors and they fell right into it:
Tony Jay
Why on Earth would anyone want to do that?
Ah. Gotcha. How about a firm and contemptuous no? Does no work?
Whoever wrote that drivel could have just said “Don’t blame us for buying into and manstreaming Right wing frames. Blame those idiot students for making us do it!” Spared everyone from wasting valuable time better spent visiting an owl sanctuary or replacing a worn dowel.
gvg
@Jackie: Every large group of humans has it’s stupid ones.
tam1MI
@Tony Jay: The article in question comes from Slate, which is a left wing publication that has been very supportive of the protestors.
But the blunt fact is that the protestors tactics have been backfiring drastically. Polls are showing majorities – even amongst Democrats! – saying that colleges should be MORE HARSH in their responses to protestors.
Their current tactics ARE NOT WORKING. They need to find a different way to get their message across.
Jay
@tam1MI:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/05/illiberal-america
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/05/whites-always-oppose-protest-movements-no-matter-the-tactics
tam1MI
@Jay: So, the protestors have no agency whatsoever here?
Dan B
@Kosh III: It’s toxic media that fuels these fears. My partner’s sister called from Bellingham terrified that we were about to be engulfed in flames due to BLM terror attacks. She was watching film of flaming cities on her local FOX. One guy had set something like a wastebasket on fire outside a heavily fortified police station. There’s also endless coverage of huge increases in violent crime. Data shows large decreases.
We live in a stew of toxic propaganda and like the fish we don’t notice this ‘water’ we swim in.
Jay
@tam1MI:
Nope. They never have. In the US there is no way to “protest right”
All protests are “wrong”, until eventually, they are ancient history and can be “whitewashed”.
smith
I agree. The only way to protest effectively is to do it “wrong.” If you do it “right” no one will notice or care. It’s all about making good trouble.
Jay
@Dan B:
Yeah, there was a late night comment in one of the Protest threads claiming that Portland will be trashed and burned down this summer by Palestinian protestors and the Black Block.
Funny thing is, it only took 2 years to completely rebuild Portland after the last round of protests. That should have been front page news. (snark)
Eyeroller
@smith: It’s true that most people (not just whites, but in this country perhaps especially so) are suspicious or unsupportive of most protest movements, but some tactics are particularly unpopular across the board. Vandalism is extremely unpopular and will set your cause back, which is why the presence of right wing/anarchist/stupid kids who want to smash things/ at e.g. the BLM protests was a huge problem. I am old enough to remember the Vietnam War campus protests. They weren’t popular even when completely peaceful (e.g. Kent State, most Americans of the time thought the young people “got what was coming to them”) but occupying and vandalizing buildings (e.g. the same building at Columbia that was recently occupied) really crosses a line. Blocking traffic is also extremely unpopular and usually counterproductive. On the other hand, mass marches in the DC area, which has several pedestrian-only zones where people can mass, have often been reasonably effective. Passive resistance can also be effective.
TL;DR vandalism and property damage are not “good trouble.”
Tony Jay
@tam1MI:
Sure. Sure. They could try NOT protesting about Israel’s attack on Gaza’s civilians and their own Government’s funding of it. They could try owning huge news organisations and using them to NOT spread misinformation about their protests. They could try infiltrating police forces across the country, taking over their leadership ranks and then NOT brutally attacking peaceful protests.
Not sure how they could do all these things, but I’m sure it must all be super easy. Maybe that Slate article has a to-do list.
Still, nice to know they’ve brought all of this down on themselves. Nothing to do with the hordes of ever so savvy ‘proper’ Democrats nodding along to the same wingnut frames that were last used against the BLM protests. After all, only teenagers who don’t like genocide have agency, everything and everyone else just sort of happens.
Jeffro
@tam1MI: SO TRUE
CaseyL
Slate is absolutely right.
These kinds of protests have a long record, and it’s not good. They backfire more often than not.
The demonstrations have overtaken coverage and discussion of what they were (ostensibly) about. Very little about Gaza, all about encampments and barricades and police actions here on college campuses.
Who is benefiting from the demonstrations?
Not the people in Gaza, Rafah, or Palestine generally.
Not the students, being manipulated and attacked and punished.
Not the colleges, who present themselves alternatively as naive, brutalist, and just plain stupid.
Who, then?
Jeffro
@Jay:
@smith:
I can think of two left-leaning protest movements in recent memory that did really, really well:
That’s it.
Jay
@Eyeroller:
How did that Womens March go?
Nice to see the ERA passed, oh, wait, it didn’t. Still hasn’t.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/05/authoritarians-love-state-violence
Jay
@CaseyL:
Guess you havn’t read any of Martin’s comments or his guest front page.
schrodingers_cat
@CaseyL: Agreed. Also, People in the US in general are more pro Israel than the even the Democrats are. The public opinion is already not in favor of the cause and the protests are alienating even many of those who support the Gazans.
ETA: IIRC Jay and Tony Jay are Canadian and British respectively. I find it ironic how people who don’t live in the US have firm unshakeable opinions about our politics.
Chris
@Jay:
This isn’t just true in general, but especially true of Israel and Palestine related protests.
What’s that? We want Palestinian advocates to protest, but only in the right way? Okay. I can see how some of these protests aren’t being helpful and I’d like to imagine better ways to do it.
What if they advocated a boycott of Israeli goods, the same kind that’s been advocated and engaged in against any number of regimes with varying degrees of success over the last few decades? No terrorism, no property destruction, no one inconvenienced on the way to work, just a boycott. Surely nobody reasonable could object to that, right?
… oh, okay. Every jurisdiction in America is rushing to pass laws penalizing people who don’t buy Israeli, and other nations are getting in on that too. Okay, I guess that wasn’t the right way to do it. Um… Say, what if I just stood in front of a house that’s been scheduled for demolition by Israeli settlers? Not blew up bombs or threw rocks, just fucking… stood there?
… aaaaand I’ve been run over with a bulldozer and am now dead. Barely anyone noticed. For some reason or another, this is not being labeled as “terrorism.” Okay, I guess that wasn’t the right way either.
But surely there is a Right Way To Protest, we just have to look a little harder, and as soon as we do, the media, the fascists, and half the Democratic Party won’t immediately rush to smear, demonize, and otherwise lie about it to continue their preferred narrative. Right? … right?
Eyeroller
@Jay: The ERA wasn’t what the Women’s March was about. That is ancient history and nobody in the US thinks about it anymore. Oh hey, the last state supposedly ratified it decades after the expiration. Whoopee! The Women’s March was an early show of resistance to Donald Trump and I think it was effective at that. Don’t bother referring me to LGM. They are a bunch of doomers and don’t always know what they’re talking about when they get outside their area of expertise.
CaseyL
@Jay: I have. I listen to Martin when he speaks.
But the questions I asked in my comment – which no one has answered – are still there: Who is benefiting from the demonstrations?
Eyeroller
@Chris: Some of them are demanding divestment of Microsoft and Amazon. I assume that is because of Azure and AWS being used by the Israeli military, possibly for their AI killbots, and not because Israeli citizens use Office and order stuff from Amazon. But there are plenty of cloud providers and the Israelis could easily stand up their own if necessary. I would actually like to see some discussion of sensible divestiture policies, such as we had back in the anti-apartheid days–and maybe boycotting certain conferences, etc., but that’s not what I’m hearing as much about.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Eyeroller: Good comment
Jay
@Eyeroller:
There are 4 things that LGM is “the best” blog in covering.
Academia, Labour, Civil Rights and Graves.
Jay
@CaseyL:
It took a decade of Civil Rights protests in the US before there was some change in Law, but not practice.
Eyeroller
@Jay: They are not the best at academia. Not by a long shot.
Jay
@Eyeroller:
The Students have asked for both boycott, (“illegal” in 25 States) and divestiture,
In one of the comments in Martin’s threads, it was pointed out that it’s not the 1960’s anymore. Universities don’t hold many stocks anymore, it’s mostly mutual funds and other broad based investment vehicles, just like your 401K.
So how does a University divest from LockMart, Boeing, Palidin when they don’t hold any stock?
And as Martin has pointed out, the Uni’s arn’t listening to their students at all.
Jay
@Eyeroller:
Name 10 better at covering the politics.
Eyeroller
@Jay: That’s really rapid change for the US, especially for race-related law! I only wish it had made as much difference as some people at the time thought it might.
schrodingers_cat
@CaseyL: Those who want the Dems to lose the November elections
@Eyeroller: Without the the Immigration and Naturalization Acts which were a part of the Civil Rights package that LBJ signed. I and millions of others would not have been able to become citizens. So for one will never pooh pooh the Civil Rights struggle unlike some passive onlookers in this comment section.
Elizabelle
@MazeDancer: Wrong Conway. Agree. WTF? Plouffe is normalizing the Alternative Facts woman. Bad idea.
Eyeroller
@Jay: I can’t because you don’t see what’s really going on, on the blogs or the substacks. Let’s see. Lemieux is at a tiny liberal-arts college. Great, those are wonderful institutions and I hope they survive (it’s not a given that more than few will). He doesn’t have a clue about the politics of a research university, but frequently writes as if he does. Campos is at an R1 university but in one of their professional schools, which are isolated from the rest of the university and have their own politics. Loomis is, well, Loomis. University of Rhode Island is R2 which has its own political issues, since most R2 want to be R1s, and he’s a (bitter) humanist.
CaseyL
@Jay: As someone has noted, it isn’t the 60’s anymore. Americans are already aware of what’s going on, have some but not much sympathy for Palestinians. And – as monumental as the Civil Rights Act and Voting Act were and are – they were rather straightforward. What’s going on now is not at all the same thing. The demonstrators’ demands are all over the place, and range from something that Biden has very little control over (ceasefire) to things that are unfeasible or illegal or Biden has even less control over (divestment, boycott, ICC case).
@schrodingers_cat: Bing, bing, bing! Yup.
Martin
@CaseyL: You are expecting results in a process that is not fast, and you are too shallow in your analysis.
The Vietnam war protests didn’t end the war, but it established how that war is regarded in history – even though it followed a lot of the same contours of the Korean War, which has a very different historical take. It did shift public perception of the war. It forced the US to remove the draft as a consideration in future wars. It had profound impacts on how higher education functions. It forced the Democratic Party into an anti-war position, which it still largely holds. It added voice to continuing civil rights protests as those movements fused at various times, and it made the receipt of Vietnamese refugees after the war possible. Many asian anti-war protesters were motivated by lingering anti-asian sentiments in the US. The anti-war movement also fused with the new environmental movement, pushing it forward.
The movement today is viewed pretty favorably, because in hindsight we feel the protesters got it right.
These things take time, and the protests rarely benefit the people there today, but may in the future. We’re having new discussions of zionism vs semitism which are long overdue. I expect there will be new discussions regarding the US posture toward many countries in the region when this is over with, which haven’t even started yet. They may change public sentiment toward Palestinians. There will be new conversations about the rights of students at universities, about why younger generations don’t adopt the framing of older generations regarding the region, and so on. That’ll come later. And they help build momentum for other protests that don’t fit the ‘spoiled college student’ narrative.
Protests usually work, just not in the way that you might think. Despite how we teach history, it rarely works in this straight line cause and effect manner.
Martin
@Jay: One of the outcomes from this may be that some of those laws are ruled unconstitutional.
And don’t overlook the subtext from the students that instead of investing in LockMart or the S&P 500, maybe they should be investing in the students. There’s been a growing argument around academia and government that those endowments should be used to expand the university to serve more students, rather than to make them more exclusive – that if their endowment grows 5%, in order to keep it tax-free, they need to expand their enrollment 5%.
The students are not demanding that, but it will come up, and the people favoring that policy will be empowered by this opportunity.
Martin
@Eyeroller: Tiny liberal arts universities are closing about one per month. They are steadily going extinct.
Martin
@schrodingers_cat: This will only help Dems lose if we buy into the GOP framing here and agree that these are terrible things. Why do you think I wrote that front page post? Because that framing deserves to be countered by each and every one of us. I am giving you the ammunition to do that. Go do it.
evodevo
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I enjoyed it…it wasn’t bad – done with a sense of humor, and Lee Majors was rather likeable. Markie Post got her start on that show…
dilbert dogbert
Back in my NASA days, 1990 or so, one of my young co-workers tried to get a project going to celebrate the Wright brothers first flight with a first flight on Mars. No luck.
Kristine
The CBS Sunday Morning video was a delight! Thanks for posting it.
tam1MI
True enough, but I think it is also true that if tactics used by protestors are backfiring and, worse, playing into to the hands of the people setting the GOP frame, it isn’t unreasonable to say, “These particular tactics aren’t working and are counterproductive, protestors need to try something different”. This isn’t holding people to some mythical “right way” to protest, this is simply acknowledging the reality that some tactics are not effective, they need to be dropped in favor of tactics that are.
Jay
@Eyeroller:
That’s funny, because I can read blogs, substacks and my wife works for a Uni.
So the only way I can take your post, is basically that you can’t even name one.
schrodingers_cat
@Martin: You are being presumptous in assuming that
UncleEbeneezer
@Martin: “#GenocideJoe” is another framing that we all should be countering, instead of defending.
Kayla Rudbek
@Tony Jay: fourth thought; is he spying for the Russians?
CaseyL
@Martin:
The Vietnam protests were truly “awareness raising,” in that they alerted the general population – and, importantly, the news media – to things that they either didn’t know or hadn’t thought much about. Ditto the early Civil Rights marches: Middle America was unprepared to see peaceful marchers being beaten, having police dogs set on them, and having fire hoses aimed at them. This was new, and horrible, and people felt impelled to think about what they had seen.
That is no longer the case. People are aware of what’s happening. Maybe they’re horrified by it… but they are not about to upend their lives to deal with it, because they also are aware that the Israel-Palestinian problem, and the attendant Israel-Arab World problem, is 80+ years old and not only defies every effort to solve, but has outright killed many politicians who tried to solve it (Sadat, Rabin) or had good ideas about how to solve it (RFK, the real one, not his awful namesake). They KNOW that marches and demonstrations and protests are not going to solve anything. They have seen this movie before. Tens of millions marched against Bush’s war in Iraq: the war happened anyway. Tens of millions of women marched against Donald Trump when he was elected: he took power anyway, and did what he did, and how we have a corrupt, reactionary, theocratic SCOTUS stripping our rights away one by one.
Your other point – that these things take time, they change the conversation, the way the issues are framed, the very definitions of what the issues are – is true. I wish you could tell the people doing the protesting and demonstrating these things take time. Because they are not talking about a gradual process by which our perceptions and definitions change: they are demanding actions NOW, and threatening domestic political upheaval NOW, and withdrawing their support for Democrats and Joe Biden NOW, and seemingly incapable of comprehending that what they will accomplish is putting the GOP and Trump back in power. And if they think the situation in Gaza is an enormity, an atrocity, now – just wait until Trump and the GOP let Netanyahu do whatever the hell he wants anywhere he wants.
This is what upsets me and makes me angry. The protestors may be as sincere and committed to the greater good as you say, and as they say, but they are absolutely being used by people who are, emphatically, neither of those things. They are, no shit, being used as a wedge to get Donald Trump back in the WH by breaking the coalition that elected Joe Biden.
Do I care about what’s happening in Gaza? Yes. Do I wish Israel could be rid of Netanyahu and his entire government? Yes.
But, to be perfectly honest, I care a lot more, a hell of a lot more, about what’s happening in the US, to women and LGBTQ and people of color. I care a hell of a lot more about the oncoming climate catastrophe. I care a hell of a lot more about keeping Trump out of the WH and the GOP out of the majority. Internationally, I even care a hell of a lot more about Ukraine beating Russia than I do about Gaza or Israel. All of which will become more horrific than I want to think about if Biden and the Democrats lose in November.
Quadrillipede
Thank you!
2liberal
According to his LGM bio and the university site, Lemieux is at the University of Washington.
https://www.polisci.washington.edu/people/scott-lemieux
Martin
@CaseyL:
Note, in my comments I have not made any expressions regarding the whether or not the students are correct, merely that the institution has invited them to protest and that they have the right to explore their ideas.
You would have them trade that academic freedom for a political practicality, and I question whether that is a valid trade. We don’t have to accept the idea that these protests will harm the election outcome, especially when the outcome of the election may well hinge on the students themselves, and if liberals turn on their own values, why the fuck should these students vote for us? Who is to say we won’t turn on women and LGBTQ and people of color next for political practicality? Which I would note is not a hypothetical given what I quoted.
I would argue that if you want Democrats to succeed here, you should be fighting not for what the students are demanding, but for the students right to demand it. You see a threat, when you could see an opportunity, but Democrats too often see a poll, see Fox News screeching some shit and enter this defensive crouch ‘oh no, BLM protestors are going to ruin the election for Democrats’ and then we won, kind of by a lot, due in no small part to black voters.
And every one of your arguments about the student protests would apply equally to the BLM ones in 2020, which were significantly more violent and destructive, and which the GOP sought to exploit even harder – especially because Trump was in office and could act to inflame the matter, such as in Portland. So how do you square that practical threat to the election with your concern for people of color? I’m guessing you didn’t express that sentiment then. Or maybe you did, were wrong, and failed to learn the lesson.
CaseyL
@Martin:
These are good points. I’m not sure I agree with them, but they are good points.