You couldn’t pay me to ride in a Tesla

Let alone buy one. They’re over-engineered and clumsily designed, as we can see in the example of this stupid, poinless death.

Angela Chao, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s billionaire sister-in-law, spent her last minutes alive frantically calling her friends for help as her Tesla slowly sank in a pond on a remote Texas ranch, according to a report.

Chao, the billionaire former CEO of dry bulk shipping giant Foremost Group, tragically died at the age of 50 on Feb. 10 after accidentally backing her car into the pond while making a three-point turn.

When the car lost power, she couldn’t get out while the car filled with water.

The windows are made of laminated glass, which sounds like a plus, but they’re so hard they aren’t easily broken. The doors are opened electronically, with a clever little button. There is a manual switch for the front doors, but they’re not obvious and you need to have read the manual to know about them. The manual switches for the back doors are buried in a very nonintuitive place, and further, owners are warned that using them too much can damage the finish.

Apparently, changing gears is done with an LED touch screen. Why? Multiple generations of Americans have been trained on simple levers and buttons that are familiar and reliable. There is a virtue to simplicity and obvious controls.

Manual controls are probably cheaper, too, but not as flashy.

The end of UAPs? Not likely.

The Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) released a report that will finally end all that UFO/UAP nonsense. Just kidding — nothing will end the human capacity for self-delusion. But it’s a start.

AARO found no evidence that any USG investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology. All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification. Although not the focus of this report, it is worthwhile to note that all official foreign UAP investigatory efforts to date have reached the same general conclusions as USG investigations.

  • Although many UAP reports remain unsolved or unidentified, AARO assesses that if more and better quality data were available, most of these cases also could be identified and resolved as ordinary objects or phenomena. Sensors and visual observations are imperfect; the vast majority of cases lack actionable data or the data available is limited or of poor quality.
  • Resources and staffing for these programs largely have been irregular and sporadic, challenging investigatory efforts and hindering effective knowledge transfer.
  • The vast majority of reports almost certainly are the result of misidentification and a direct consequence of the lack of domain awareness; there is a direct correlation between the amount and quality of available information on a case with the ability to conclusively resolve it.

I thought this was an amusing comment on the quality of the evidence.

Another program brought to AARO’s attention, Kona Blue, was alleged to be a Homeland Security Department effort “to cover up the retrieval and exploitation of ‘nonhuman biologics,’” the report found. In other words, alien bodies.

The origins of those suspicions, investigators found, traced back to some of those earlier Pentagon researchers, backed by Reid, who had strayed into studying UAPs.

When the Defense Intelligence Agency canceled that effort in 2012 “due to lack of merit,” its supporters proposed that Homeland Security fund a new version to investigate paranormal research, including “human consciousness anomalies,” the report found. The program, which they proposed calling Kona Blue, also would reverse-engineer “off-world spacecraft that they hoped to acquire.” The Kona Blue backers assumed that biological evidence of aliens was already in the government’s possession, the report found.

They proposed to study aliens and spacecraft that “they hoped to acquire”. Cool. What are the chances of my getting funding for my NSF proposal to study spiders from Mars that I “hope to aquire”? I’m sure, though, that we’ll be hearing about the unauthorized, unsupported, imaginary Kona Blue project for years to come. The only thing you need to do to captivate the Ancient Aliens crowd is to invent a catchy, enigmatic name.

In related news, you may recall that Avi Loeb claimed to have scraped tiny molten balls from an exploded UFO in the ocean off New Guinea. He launched his expedition years after the fireball was observed, and claimed he had mapped the location from real scientific data, seismographic recordings that caught a little jiggle at the precise time of the supposed crash.

Except it wasn’t. He was chasing a trivial seismic glitch.

In January 2014, a meteor scorched its way through the atmosphere, a brilliant ball of fire over the Pacific Ocean.

Before it plunged into the sea, strange sound waves were picked up by a seismometer in nearby Papua New Guinea.

Could it have been an alien signal? Perhaps a desperate SOS?

Sadly for UFO fans, it was not. The sound waves were actually from a truck, distinctly Earthly in origin, trundling along a nearby road.

‘The signal changed directions over time, exactly matching a road that runs past the seismometer,’ said Dr Benjamin Fernando, a planetary seismologist at Johns Hopkins University who led the research.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter. It never does. I’m going to see Loeb’s grinning, gnomish face popping up on web pages for the rest of my life, aren’t I? It’s of no importance that he has zero evidence, his thesis is ridiculous, but he wields that fading authority of Harvard, so every kook in the world will lap up his dribblings.

In my prime!

Today’s my birthday! Guess how old I am.


Old ’67 what a time it was
What a time of innocence, what a time we’ve lost
Raise a glass and have a laugh, have a laugh or two
Here’s to old ’67 and an older me and you

It was very nice of Elton to write that song just for me.

It is also the first day of spring break, so I should probably do something fun, like take a nap.

We’re also having a grand get-together of the gang at FtB, throwing a podcast to celebrate.

Whoa, that’s the worst party theme ever. I think maybe it’s not going to be about me at all. At least, I hope not.

They’re not sending their best

Joe Rogan needs to do a better job screening guests on his show. Here’s one of his interesting guests.

Sheldon Johnson – a 48-year-old youth counselor for the Queens Defenders who spent 25 years in prison for attempted murder and robbery – was introduced on the Joe Rogan Experience in February by his friend, Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice executive director Josh Dubin, as “a marvelous human being” who was wronged by “the system.”

Johnson was also photographed shaking hands with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

He sounds better than Jordan Peterson or Alex Jones or Elon Musk or Gavin McInnes. Except…

However, less than a year after his release from prison, Johnson was arrested in New York on Thursday after police found a severed head in an apartment freezer and a torso stashed in a bin.

What kind of life puts you on a trajectory that leads to stuffing decapitated heads in a freezer?

Oh, wait. Never mind.

Deja vu — it used to be called “teach the controversy”

Classic foot-in-the-door technique, just picture them wearing ragged dirty clodhoppers

You all remember Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the court case that decided that no, teachers couldn’t smuggle creationism into the classroom by pretending they were teaching reasonable alternatives? This story about a West Virginia law even references it.

In 2005, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that it was unconstitutional to present intelligent design as an alternative to evolution because it advanced a Christian viewpoint and is not legitimate science.

Well, it’s baaaack!

A bill that could permit teachers to discuss and answer questions from students about theories, including intelligent design, will head to the House of Delegates for a vote after a tweak Tuesday morning.

Senators already approved the bill, Senate Bill 280, early in the legislative session, saying it protected teachers who may face legal challenges when discussing theories outside of evolution.

A Democrat member of the House Committee on the Judiciary argued that the bill didn’t explicitly permit intelligent design in classroom teaching — despite what was discussed as a possible intent of the legislation in the Senate.

During debate, Republicans emphasized that the bill wouldn’t be a mandate of what to teach; rather, they said the legislation ensured that students could have wide-ranging discussions on theories.

“This bill doesn’t require a teacher to teach creationism,” said Del. Andy Shamblin, R-Kanawha, who is a public school teacher. “All this bill does is say if the subject is brought up, the teacher can discuss that subject.”

While voicing support of the legislation, Del. Scot Heckert, R-Wood, said that the bill could result in more students being interested in science or “simply [keep] them from getting involved in drugs, playing on the computer all the time or eating Tide Pods.”

Teachers have not been prohibited from having a conversation about a topic not in the curriculum (unless, of course, it’s mentioning that they’re happily gay-married, in which case fundamentalists will storm the school with pitchforks and torches.) They can say, “I believe in the book of Genesis” and then move on — what they can’t do is derail the whole curriculum by spending class time going over the begats or treating the bullshit peddled by the Discovery Institute as science. Public schools are supposed to have science standards, a set of things the teachers are obligated to teach, because they are supposed to be preparing them for college, or for life as an educated citizen. Teach those religious ‘alternatives’ in Sunday School, where you’re not constrained by the shackles of reality or practicality.

Naturally, the Bible thumpers make the same arguments they always have.

Del. Todd Kirby, R-Raleigh, said that he didn’t see how the legislation introduced religion to students in the sciences classes.

“Just because you believe we came from something greater than a mere chance or an instance when everything happened to come together in our universe and solar system … it doesn’t mean you’re pushing religion. It just means you have a different theory than what’s taught in school,” he said.

Another ignorant yahoo who thinks evolution equals chance, and that any old tall tale you can babble about is a “theory”. What he’s talking about is a peculiar religious myth that he wants taught alongside natural selection and the periodic table and Newton’s laws of motion. He just wants the schools to pretend that Adam & Eve have equal explanatory power to common descent.

No one is fooled. I know and he knows that he is pushing religion, he’s just the one lying about it.

Meanwhile, the state of Kentucky is likewise investing large amounts of money into promoting faith-based bologna, as the FFRF points out.

The Northern Kentucky Convention & Visitors Bureau’s new Kentucky Faith Trail program has received a $305,000 grant from the state. The Faith Trail is a self-guided tour through 11 sites of “faith, culture, and history,” as a Bureau press release states. Even though the trail “is designed to be inclusive, welcoming people of all faiths and backgrounds to embark on a shared journey of discovery and reflection,” all 11 sites are Christian. To belabor the obvious, this makes the trail the opposite of “inclusive” and welcoming to people of “all faiths and backgrounds.”

Two of the sites, the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum, are well known for spreading misinformation and promoting anti-science worldviews, FFRF points out. The Ark Encounter purports to be an accurate replica of the mythical ark from the biblical story of Noah and claims that the Christian story of a worldwide flood actually happened. Similarly, the Creation Museum promotes scientifically disproven myths of how the universe came to be and promotes inaccurate information, such as teaching guests that humans and dinosaurs once co-existed on Earth. Both the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum are owned by Answers in Genesis, an extreme evangelical Christian organization that spreads misinformation and scientifically inaccurate teachings about our world.

The Bureau must cease using taxpayer money to promote a Faith Trail that includes the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum, FFRF stresses.

Gullibility, unfortunately, does not disqualify one for running for high office.

Goodbye, OnlySky

I regret to inform you all that an atheist blog network, OnlySky, has announced that they are ceasing publication. We first announced that OnlySky was setting up shop 2 years ago, mentioning that Hemant Mehta had snubbed us casually.

There aren’t any media outlets that cater specifically to atheists,” he said. “All the other atheist specific blogging networks are run by volunteers and people who are passionate about the subject but don’t do business-savvy anything, so they falter and die. This one has digital expertise.

I could cruelly remind them of the irony of that “falter and die” comment, and that despite our lack of business-savvy we yet continue, but I honestly regret that we’re losing such an attractive and well-designed website (and that I’m jealous of their professionalism), and hope that the good writers working there can find new homes. I’ll read them where ever they end up.

Somehow, though, I doubt that Sydney Sweeney has any socialist sympathies

I have no idea who Sydney Sweeney is. She is apparently a hot new Hollywood star who has been working hard, appearing in a bunch of movies I haven’t seen, and good for her — but I think all celebrities get more attention and money than they actually deserve.

In an informative twist, though, I learned from this article that there are tiers of celebrity, and that Sweeney is near the bottom because she isn’t a nepo baby. Despite having a $3 million house and being pursued by paparazzi, she’s on a treadmill where she must work non-stop (at being fabulous and fashionable, which is of course much nicer than having to grind non-stop at factory) or her whole world will come crashing down.

The whole of American society, at this moment, is a layer of various anxieties and resentments without any sincerely shared values pinning it all in place. Some of those resentments are more deserved than others; the millennial generation stands to inherit a whopping $68 trillion from the Boomer generation. What is being coined The Great Wealth Transfer is already beginning. Sweeney’s peers, who are mostly the children of very rich people, are going to become even richer by doing nothing. Millions of millennials are going to become very rich by doing nothing. Among the many benefits of this will be that they can post only when they want to. They will be able to take jobs they care about instead of ones they need.

But Sweeney isn’t one of those people. She comes from a family that could not afford to financially support her at all when she finished school. She will not have the luxury of relaxing as her inheritance pours in. Everyone deserves to be able to take six months off to have a baby. Everyone. The fact that Sydney Sweeney cannot is a reminder that the reason American workers do not have paid family leave is also the reason each generation has more nepotism babies than the last. We do not tax rich people enough and they do not pay their fair share; the fact of that, over decades, has intruded upon and warped every aspect of American life. Sweeney has to work, like everyone else, and has to do so for whatever she can get, and she has to do it knowing that what reaches her was the absolute minimum figure that people who are paid much more than her had determined that she would be willing to take. She’s not alone.

I wouldn’t feel sorry for Sweeney, but she does demonstrate that wealth inequality permeates every level of American society, and that always the ones on top are the people loaded with inherited wealth that they never had to work for. Tax the rich! Tax them a lot!

Thrashing Boeing, deservedly

Portrait of a modern Boeing plane

Everett, Seattle, Renton, Kent, Auburn — growing up in the Seattle area, we knew the chain of Boeing towns, where so many of our family members worked. My father worked in several of those plants as a diesel mechanic, my mother was wiring the planes, my brother works in the windtunnel unit, my sister was in marketing — we had a lot of Boeing pride. Before about 1990, when booking flights, I’d actually preferentially select Boeing planes over Airbus, because it was reassuring to be on a plane where I could imagine my Mom building cable assemblies with loving care.

No more, of course. Boeing, a company of engineers, merged with McDonnell-Douglas, a company run by profit-seeking military contractors, and oh boy, those flightless chickens have come home to roost, where “home” is no longer a series of factories but skyscrapers in Chicago. They got the John Oliver treatment this week.

I wouldn’t fly in a Boeing MAX plane myself. I’m just a timid little biologist, though…it’s a bad sign when your own former engineers refuse to fly in them. Ed Pierson, ex-Boeing engineer, says:

Last year, I was flying from Seattle to New York, and I purposely scheduled myself on a non-MAX airplane. I went to the gate. I walked in, sat down and looked straight ahead, and lo and behold, there was a 737-8/737-9 safety card. So I got up and I walked off. The flight attendant didn’t want me to get off the plane. And I’m not trying to cause a scene. I just want to get off this plane, and I just don’t think it’s safe. I said I purposely scheduled myself not to fly [on a MAX].

Our recommendation from the foundation is that these planes get grounded — period. Get grounded and inspected and then, depending on what they find, get fixed.

The people to blame are the executives at Boeing.

Boeing’s board of directors — they have a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that their products are safe, and they’re not in touch. They’re not engaged. They don’t visit the sites. They don’t talk to the employees. They’re not on the ground floor. Look, these individuals are making millions of dollars, right? And there’s others between the C-suite and the people on the factory line. There’s hundreds of executives who are also very well compensated and managers that should be doing a lot more. But their leadership is a mess. The leadership sets the whole tone for any organization. Public pressure needs to continue.

That board of directors, and all those executives, don’t know what they’re doing. They ought to all be fired, and the company put in the hands of good engineers who prioritize safety and quality, but instead you’ve got accountants who just want to make lots of money, doing their “fiduciary duty.” Ironically, all that short term emphasis on profit is destroying the company, trashing their reputation, and killing people. I also wouldn’t invest in Boeing any more.

Hey, why are stock buybacks even legal? The executives seem to be more interested in artificially pumping up their stock prices than in, you know, building airplanes.

Oh well. It’s all great news for Airbus.

AI is hell

Can we just knock it off with the AI nonsense? Somebody is profiting off this colossal sinkhole of useless frippery, but I don’t know who. Look what it’s doing to our environment, all because people like Mark Zuckerberg have decided it’s cool, and the future of profiteering.

The amount of water that A.I. uses is unconscionable, particularly given that so many of its data centers are in desert regions that can ill afford to squander it. A.I. uses this much water because of the computing power it requires, which necessitates chilled water to cool down equipment—some of which then evaporates in the cooling process, meaning that it cannot be reused. The Financial Times recently reported academic projections showing that A.I. demand may use about half the amount of water consumed by the United Kingdom in a year. Around the world, communities are rightly beginning to resist the construction of new data centers for this reason.

Then there’s A.I.’s energy use, which could double by 2026, according to a January report by the International Energy Association. That’s the equivalent of adding a new heavily industrialized country, like Sweden or Germany, to the planet.

Microsoft’s own environmental reports reveal these immense problems: As the company has built more platforms for generative A.I., its resource consumption has skyrocketed. In 2022, the company’s use of both water and electricity increased by one-third, its largest uptick ever.

We should be asking what we gain from glossy shiny artificial artwork, or from bizarre texts cobbled together by machines that don’t actually understand anything. Search engines are already corrupted by commercialized algorithms, do we really need to add another complex layer that adds nothing to anything? Tell me one thing AI adds to improve the world.

Do we need this?

Dozens of fake, artificial intelligence-generated photos showing Donald Trump with Black people are being spread by his supporters, according to a new investigation.

BBC Panorama reported that the images appear to be created by supporters themselves. There is no evidence tying the photos to Trump’s campaign.

One photo was created by the Florida-based conservative radio show host Mark Kaye.

“I’m not out there taking pictures of what’s really happening. I’m a storyteller,” Kaye told BBC. “I’m not claiming it is accurate. I’m not saying, ‘Hey, look, Donald Trump was at this party with all of these African American voters. Look how much they love him.’”

Maybe what we really need is a Butlerian Jihad.