More of: “World love on America”…

Europe will live

I’m generally pessimistic about Europe. And the West. But optimistic about all sorts of other things.

Pessimistic about politics, culture and society in the west.

Optimistic about science and technology.

Brivael Le Pogam, French entrepreneur and essayist, suggests I should be a little more optimistic about Europe. I sure hope he’s right. Time alone will tell. But how much time?

/Snip:

This continent hasn’t had its last word. It won’t. As long as one man remains to love what he has received, to want to pass it on intact, to prefer a hard truth to a comfortable lie—Europe will live.

Link.

Disneyland, Kowloon,Hong Kong, Ferry

Capitalist United States vs Socialist Europe

 

The bigger the circle the bigger the company. The bigger the cluster, the bigger the economy. Green are high-tech, blue all others. 

This chart is from a few years ago, an MIT study. My guess is that the difference has widened.

US is like the place they “move fast and break things”. Then they fix them. 

Europe is like the place that doesn’t want to “break” things in the first place. So they regulate them.

ADDED:

Why Europe could never produce an Elon Musk. Nikos Sotirakopoulos. An ex-communist, turned Common-sensical. 

Elon Musk the great inventor, builder, capitalist | WSJ

Elon Musk officially entered the canon of the greatest inventors, builders and capitalists not only of our time but arguably of humankind. What a time to be alive. What an extraordinary era to build, writes @EliseStefanik

The Truth About Elon Musk's Wealth | All-in pod and Steven Mark Ryan

Follow-on from my post just now. 

Courtesy of Aussie YouTuber Steven Mark Ryan. 

Brings us a discussion by the All-in pod bros: Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, David Friedberg, Chamath.

With some clear explanations of how and why Elon became a trillionaire. As Sacks points out: he has not one single dollar more in cash today than he had last month. All that's happened is that the public has valued the stock he has in a company he created at more than it was when it was private.  

Why Europe could never produce an Elon Musk. Nikos Sotirakopoulos. An ex-communist, turned Common-sensical. 

Imagine Elon Musk is truly evil…

So much disinformation and misinformation about Elon Musk. 

My sum of it all: His haters are either knaves or fools. Either dishonest knaves (disinformation) or ignorant fools (misinformation). 

Disinformation is false info that’s deliberately out out there because you don’t like the person. 

Misinformation is spread by ignorance. You near something bad about a person you hate; you’re happy to spread it because it harms the person you hate.

Like Brivael Le Pogam (below) I also read and listened to lots by and about Musk. Even more than Brivael I think. 

Even before Musk was hated by the Left today, I was reading about him. 

I’ve read four books about Elon and his companies, so far:

• Elon Musk, by Walter Isaacson. 
• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX…. by Ashlee Vance. 
• Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac. 
• The Book of Elon, by Eric Jorgenson. 

None of these books is a hagiography. None is by an Elon fan-boy. The Twitter one is downright hostile to Elon, though not aged at all well, given the clear improvements to Twitter now X.

The best of the books is the one by Walter Isaacson. He followed Elon everywhere, every day for two years. He’s written a terrific bio, so elegantly written it’s a real page turner. 

Then there’s Elon on social media. Multiple long-form interviews with people like Alex Fridman and Joe Rogan. Even the BBC.

From all of this I get a feel for Elon Musk and what drives him. As Brivael says below, at the top of the list there’s Freedom. Musk tries to contribute to the flourishing of freedom for humanity. “I’m a big fan of humanity” says Musk. He talks often of his drive “to keep alight the fragile flame of human consciousness”. All of these are life aims repeated often by Elon. But his haters ignore this. Instead they run a narrative that all he’s doing is to try to enrich himself by more “tax breaks for billionaires”. But Enrichment is a byproduct not the aim.

So, no, I’m don’t buy any of the nonsense that’s spread by people who used to love him when he was, so they thought, on “their side”, but made a big move to support another party, another candidate for president, namely Donald Trump. That alone sent them out of their minds.  Yet Elon didn’t change. His values, his aims, didn’t change. His commitment to his companies, his commitment to help progress humanity, didn’t change. 

Anyway, below are Brivael Le Pogam’s thoughts in this. Were it not for the X platform I would never have known of this man Brivael writing in his native French. A man who seems widely read in all the major French philosophers, and writes about them often and elegantly. Philosophers like René Girard, who again, I’d not heard of. Now know, thanks to X. Thanks, IOW, Elon.

Trump Bottles it

I agree with Jonathan Sacerdoti. And with others on the right who think this is a shocker of a “deal”. Because it is. It just is.

The MOU with the “religious maniacs” (Marco Rubio) in the Iran regime is not a “ceasefire” or some wonderful Donald Deal. It’s a shameful capitulation. It’s an embarrassment. It’s a shocker. It’s the end of Trump’s legacy. 

That’s how bad it is. IMO. And yes, I have read the very few Republicans who praise it. But there’s nothing praiseworthy here. Trump has finally got some bipartisan agreement: it’s a shocker of a deal. An embarrassment. A failure. A loss.

Gloom… 

Pride Fatigue is Real | Bridget Phetasy

Tell me Bridget Phetasy is not funny... In the vid above. 

And a great presenter. 

She should have her own show. My bet is, if she were offered a job, she'd say no. She's having too much fun, as her own boss, able to say whatever she wants. 

Central, Hong Kong Island. From Discovery Bay

Far left: ICC Centre, 108 floors. IFC Two Tower. The Peak 

“Cherry picking” is not Cherry picking…

Me to Grok:

Cherry Picking. I want to argue that this phrase is simply ad hominem. When you don’t have a counter argument you charge your interlocutor with “cherry picking”. 

BUT — and here’s the thing — EVERYTHING is cherry picking. 

Whatever facts or argument you quote are necessarily going to be a selection from the whole. You don’t sit there reading aloud a whole series of stats or a whole academic paper. You quote a BIT of it. You cherry pick. Editors do it every minute of every day to put out newspapers. These are the very definition of Cherry Picking.

Please help me make my argument. Sharpen it. Give it guts. Do it in as short a from as you can.

Grok to me:

The charge of “cherry picking” is usually ad hominem.

It is the move you make when you have no answer to the evidence presented. Instead of engaging the facts, you attack the person for having selected them.

But selection is not optional. It is the precondition of all argument. You cannot quote an entire paper, recite every statistic, or narrate the full historical record. Every claim, every article, every editorial, and every conversation is a curated slice. 

Newspapers are machines for systematic cherry-picking. So are academic papers, court arguments, and political speeches. The question is never whether selection occurred. The question is whether the selection misleads.

When someone replies “cherry picking” without showing that the omitted material actually reverses the conclusion or outweighs what was presented, they have not made a methodological point. They have made a personal one: you chose badly because you are arguing against me. That is textbook ad hominem — attacking the arguer’s character or motives rather than the argument’s substance.

Real cherry-picking exists. It is the deliberate suppression of known contradictory evidence. The casual accusation, however, almost never demonstrates this. It simply registers discomfort that the other side found data that hurts their position. 

In practice, “cherry picking” has become a thought-terminating cliché used to avoid having to do the harder work of rebuttal.

https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5LWNvcHk_f4d5ea02-d704-4bda-94fc-d094114a47a3

The Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival. Yay!

Stanley Beach, south Hong Kong Island

Happy days for the normal folk: a holiday, a 3-day weekend. 

Good exercise too! Fun for the littlies...

Our version, here in Discovery Bay, Lantau Island, Hong Kong:

Tai Pak Beach, Discovery Bay

The Forsythe Family of County Antrim, Northern Ireland

Grandfather's Birth Cert, from Ballymena, in 2018.
No. 113 is "Andrew Forsythe", paternal grandfather,
born in Northern Ireland in 1876. 

The "Forsythes" with an "e" are the ones that live in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Without the "e" it's the Scottish Forsyth's.

The Forsythes with an "e" likely were forced out of Scotland or were "encouraged" out of Scotland and to Northern Ireland in the 17th or 18th Centuries. State-sponsored colonization, known as the Plantation of Ulster. 

I may look further. Or maybe not. 

Should we Forsythes with an "e" be allowed a Right of Return? To Ballymena in Northern Ireland? Or to Scotland? 

For the Record. A summary of a longer convo. From Google's Gemini AI: 

Family History Research Report: The Forsythe Family of County Antrim

1. Decoded Birth Registry Details (11 February 1876)

• Child's Full Name: Andrew Forsythe
• Date of Birth: 11 February 1876
• Place of Birth: Tullybane (Tullynewy), Civil Parish of Dunaghy, County Antrim, Ireland
• Father's Name: Thomas Forsythe
• Father's Profession: Farmer
• Mother's Name: Bessie Forsythe (formerly Stewart)
• Registration District: Clough (within the Superintendent Registrar's District of Ballymena)
• Informant: Matilda McCormack (Present at birth; signed with her mark +, indicating she was illiterate; likely a midwife, aunt, or grandmother living in Tullybane)
• Date Registered: 29 February 1876
• Registrar: John Wiley

2. Historic & Cultural Insights

• The "E" Ending: The spelling of Forsythe with an "e" heavily signifies the family’s transition into Northern Ireland and distinguishes this branch from the traditional Scottish Forsyth.
• Ancestral Ties: Both parental surnames (Forsythe and Stewart) are classic Lowland Scottish names, confirming a deeply rooted Ulster-Scots Presbyterian heritage.
• The Local Economy: Being a farmer in Dunaghy parish during the late 19th century meant dealing with the fallout of the Irish Land War. Andrew likely chose to migrate to Australia due to agricultural hardships, lack of land ownership opportunities for younger sons, or targeted recruitment by Australian colonies looking for experienced farmers.

3. Strategic Next Steps for Records Research

Step A: Uncover Andrew's Grandfathers (The Marriage Certificate)

To extend your tree back another generation, you need to find the marriage record of Thomas Forsythe and Bessie Stewart. This will explicitly name the grandfathers of Andrew.

• Where to Search: IrishGenealogy.ie (Free, official historic civil records site).
• Search Strategy: Search "Civil Marriages" using Thomas Forsythe and Bessie Stewart (or Elizabeth Stewart) in the Ballymena district. Narrow the timeline from 1864 to 1875.
• What to look for: The certificate will list the names and occupations of both fathers (Andrew's grandfathers) and the exact Presbyterian church where they wed.

Step B: Pinpoint the Exact Family Farm Plots

Because the family remained in the same parish for generations, you can find exactly which fields Andrew grew up on.

• Where to Search: AskAboutIreland.ie - Griffith’s Valuation (Free land records mapped between 1847 and 1864).
• Search Strategy: Look for Thomas Forsythe (or an older relative like a William or John Forsythe) in County Antrim, parish of Dunaghy, townland of Tullynewy or Tullybane.
• What to look for: Note the plot number. Use the website’s map overlay slider to look at the 19th-century plot borders directly over modern satellite Google Maps.

Step C: Track the Farm Succession

To see who inherited the family farm after Andrew left for Australia, bridge the timeline gap using the land revision tax records.

• Where to Search: PRONI Valuation Revision Books (Public Record Office of Northern Ireland).
• Search Strategy: Search their digital land books for Dunaghy Parish covering 1864 to 1910.
• What to look for: Look for the Forsythe farm plot. You will physically see names crossed out in colored inks when a relative passed away and a new family member took over the tenancy.

Step D: Discover Andrew's Australian Arrival

To close the loop on his migration story around the turn of the century, look for his ship logs.

• Where to Search: The State Archives of his arrival destination (e.g., NSW State Archives for Sydney or Public Record Office Victoria for Melbourne).
• Search Strategy: Look for "Andrew Forsythe" (or Forsyth) in passenger arrival indexes between 1895 and 1905.
• What to look for: Look for listings noted as an "assisted immigrant" or "agricultural laborer," which confirms he was recruited to farm Australian soil.

To keep tracking Andrew's path down under, let me know if you know which Australian state he first lived in or if he married in Australia.