It’s Christmas Eve, and you know what that means…

It’s time for my traditional holiday activities. I have to cycle the fruit fly stocks. I need to feed the spiders. As a special treat, I’m setting up a pair of black widows for breeding, I hope. And then…the washing of the lab ware. There are many vials and containers that must be scrubbed.

I will get all that done today so I can slack off on Christmas Day, which will not be celebrated. We did not put up a Christmas tree, or any decorations. There will be no children in our house and no presents. The Christmas feast will be a simple casserole. Hell no, I’m not going to church.

I hope you all get to celebrate a mid-winter vacation in the manner of your choosing!

Benny Johnson wants to kill people

I don’t think I’ve ever heard this right-wing freak, Benny Johnson, speak before, but he spoke at a TPUSA conference recently, and it was chillingly hateful. This is scary stuff; it’s straight up fascist ranting, advocating for a terror campaign against our own citizens. I heard this on the Majority Report, but if you don’t want to hear any of the commentary but just want the straight filth from the mouth of Benny Johnson, start this video at the 2:00 minute mark and stop when you can’t take it any more. Or you can just read the transcript I’m posting.

Charlie Kirk taken from us, well, God is the author of life and death, obviously, it was God’s will, there’s nothing outside of God’s will, God didn’t make a mistake. Charlie is now a martyr. But who pulled the trigger? Well, let me tell you. As somebody who knows a lot of people who have been briefed on all of this and who have seen all the evidence and all the available evidence is empirical and demonstrable the person who pulled the trigger is part of the demonic transgender ideology that warps the minds of our young children, that poisons them, that is antithetical to creation itself.…[garbled by overtalking] I make of you man and woman, God doesn’t make mistakes, transgenderism is a lie from the pit of hell, and I’m sick of seeing transgender violence and murders in my country.

[cheers from the audience, standing ovation]

And what has made me so angry about this moment is that it should have been a unifying moment for us all to say what a horrid and wretched ideology. Now it’s time to kick in doors, right, come on FBI, do some door kicking, round ’em up. The violent antifa members, the transtifa members, it’s time, use this as a moment, that should have been a moment, but we didn’t have that moment, sadly, because there was too much tearing at the seams. It’s time to focus, ladies and gentlemen, on what’s truly ripping, the demonic evil that is ripping this country apart. Yes, this is the ideology that took Charlie Kirk from us, and what was, what was the last words that Charlie said on Earth? He was actually answering a question about transgender violence…

So much vile ideology on display in that short speech. It starts with a bizarre religious dogma that a god “wills” all actions, but then has to change gears to blame someone who pulled the trigger…and accuses a “demonic transgender ideology.” But we do know who pulled the trigger: Tyler Robinson, a young Mormon man from a conservative family. If there’s any ideology there besides radical far right conservatism and a weird religious cult, it’s gun culture.

Then he works himself into a frothing rant urging the FBI to kick down doors and round up antifa and trans people, to the roaring approval of the crowd.

This was a speech that wouldn’t have been out of place in Germany, 1933.

By the way, Kirk’s last words were in reply to questions from his audience. “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” He didn’t know: Too many, he said. There was a follow up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?” He didn’t have an answer for that, so he dodged: Counting or not counting gang violence? Then boom, he was shot by a non-transgender non-gang member.

It’s clear that these fanatics are obsessed with trans people, and even when it’s not a factor, they will use them as an excuse to foment hatred and violence.

I never have to listen to Benny Johnson ever again. On the basis of that speech alone, I condemn him.

Hey, I’ve been to huge atheist conferences, and never heard a speaker rage against religious people the way these people howl against trans people, with even less justification. Such behavior wouldn’t have got a standing ovation, that’s for sure. One exception: a few people, like Sam Harris, preached hatred against Islam, but he always did so in his usual cautious mealy-mouthed voice, and it was one of the reasons I gave up on organized atheism, and Harris in particular.

A conspiracy of absolute morons

I’m instantly suspicious of conspiracy theories, typically because believing in them requires some degree of confidence in the competence of a mob of people who somehow avoid spilling the beans. I am now faced with the possibility that if everyone involved is sufficiently below a threshold of stupidity, they can make it work, for a while at least. Now a new batch of Epstein files have been released, and they are the product of gross incompetence.

Some of the files have emerged because all you have to do is guess at likely file names, and you can access otherwise unlisted files. Some of the redactions can be circumvented by copying the text and pasting it into a separate document. This is what happens when you put Kash Patel and Pam Bondi and Dan Bongino in charge of the coverup.

Voidzilla discusses many, but not all, of the recent revelations.

There were TEN CO-CONSPIRATORS with Epstein whose names were redacted from the files? It’s true: there’s a cabal of wealthy pedophiles raping young girls, and the Trump administration is neck-deep in a cover-up to protect them.

Trump is also mentioned in some of the files.

It reads: “For your situational awareness, wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump travelled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case.

“In particular, he is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was also present. He is listed as having travelled with, among others and at various times, Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric.

“On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers; on another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump, and then-20-year-old REDACTED.

“On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a [Ghislaine] Maxwell case.”

Trump is also accused of unsavory behavior directly.

Among the files released on Tuesday is a letter that appears to have been sent by Epstein to Larry Nassar, the US gymnastics team doctor convicted of sexually abusing scores of young gymnasts, while he was in jail.

The letter, postmarked 13 August 2019 and sent from “J Epstein” at “Manhattan Correctional” to “Larry Nassar”, reads: “Dear L.N. as you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home. Good Luck! We share one thing … our love & caring for young ladies at the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair. Yours, J. Epstein.”

Ugh. Our president, ladies and gentlemen.

These revelations ought to topple the government — this is far worse than anything Woodward and Bernstein dug up that led to the resignation of Nixon. Why isn’t it? Is it because the Republican party has become a rat’s nest of corrupt crooks and apologists for criminal behavior?

On a note that seems unrelated, but is entirely relevant to the abuse of the government by a senile narcissist, Trump has now announced the construction of a huge, expensive line of battleships.

President Donald Trump’s announcement of a new class of battleships bearing his name puts a fresh spotlight on a US naval shipbuilding program that has fallen short on delivering the new warships on time and on budget in recent years, something Trump himself pointed out in his speech from Mar-a-Lago on Monday.

This is insane. Battleships haven’t been part of any modern naval doctrine since what, the Korean war? Aircraft carriers are the heart of a modern navy, but maybe not forever — I’m not an expert in military strategy, but then, neither is Donald Trump! Yet here he is, unilaterally deciding to build this gigantic, absurdly expensive, probably unnecessary, archaic battleship, and you know the appeal to him is that he’ll name it after himself.

We can later just scrape his name off the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and we can just ignore the Trump Institute for Peace, but these ships are estimated to cost $15 billion apiece, and may prove to be utterly useless to the Navy. We should not trust these ego projects from a corrupt billionaire pedophile. He’s going to ruin the country, and Republicans, once regarded as the sensible, conservative party, are not stepping up to put the brakes on this wreck of an administration.

Correction: The last US battleship, the USS Missouri, was launched in 1941. We’re done with that paradigm.

Oklahoma’s disgrace continues

The University of Oklahoma has made an announcement about the Samantha Fulnecky affair. It’s the wrong one.

A student’s claim of religious discrimination on an individual assignment in an online Psychology Course taught by a graduate teaching assistant has come to resolution. As stated previously, the student followed two available processes at the University: the grade appeals process in the college and she made a formal claim of illegal religious discrimination. As already announced, the grade appeal was decided in favor of the student, removing the assignment completely from the student’s total point value of the class, resulting in no academic harm to the student.
The claim for discrimination has been investigated and concluded. The University does not release findings from such investigations.
At the same time of the investigation, the Provost—the University’s highest ranking academic officer— and the academic Dean reviewed the full facts of the matter. Based on an examination of the graduate teaching assistant’s prior grading standards and patterns, as well as the graduate teaching assistant’s own statements related to this matter, it was determined that the graduate teaching assistant was arbitrary in the grading of this specific paper. The graduate teaching assistant will no longer have instructional duties at the University.
Because this matter involves both student and faculty rights, the University has engaged in repeated and detailed conversations with the Faculty Senate Executive Committee to ensure there is an understanding of the facts, the process, and the actions being taken.
The University of Oklahoma believes strongly in both its faculty’s rights to teach with academic freedom and integrity and its students’ right to receive an education that is free from a lecturer’s impermissible evaluative standards. We are committed to teaching students how to think, not what to think. The University will continue to review best practices to ensure that its instructors have the comprehensive training necessary to objectively assess their students’ work without limiting their ability to teach, inspire, and elevate our next generation.

So the university “investigated” and concluded that the respectful, entirely correct evaluation of the essay by the TA, Mel Curth, was out of line, and has fired her from all of her teaching obligations. I think that means they have lost all of their income, unless they also have a research fellowship. And for what? Because they applied solid academic standards to a student paper and deservedly failed her work.

They haven’t thought through the consequences of this action. Every OU student now has a cheat code: mention Jesus in your crappy essay, and you’ve got an excuse to protest if you don’t get a passing grade. That immediately devalues a diploma from OU. I know I’m going to be sneering at modern OU degrees from now on.

Another consequence is that it’s only going to get worse — Christian fundamentalists will flood into OU, while secular students will look for just about any other university to attend.

Put Bari Weiss and Kristi Noem in CECOT

That’s just the start, everyone in this rotten administration should follow.

Wait, no, I can’t recommend following any of the evil policies that the United States is using right now, not even for Nazis. It’s a struggle, but we have to be better than them, even though this story is so enraging.

Bari Weiss, the unqualified bigot who has never practiced journalism, was appointed to be in charge of the news division at CBS — the rich vermin who run the major media companies wanted to do more mergers that benefit no one but themselves used appointments of puppets as a tool to get regulatory permission to construct monopolies. Weiss has used her power to censor the news, axing a segment of the news show 60 Minutes that put the government in a bad light. The excuse given was that the Trump administration refused to comment on it, which implies that the government has de facto control of what journalism can be presented on CBS. Bari Weiss has sold out.

The segment that was killed was all about our policy of deporting people to CECOT, the inhumane torture dungeon in El Salvador. It’s a brazenly evil place; the administrators have openly encouraged ‘influencers’ to tour it and record what is going on, because they are proud of what they do. 60 Minutes was going to show what the El Salvadoran and United States government was doing to the inmates.

The deported migrants were sent to CECOT, short for the Terrorism Confinement Center, a massive high-security prison built by El Salvador’s government as part of President Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on gangs. Designed to hold tens of thousands of inmates, CECOT is known for extreme isolation, strict control, and conditions that human rights organizations have repeatedly described as inhumane.

Former detainees interviewed by Sharyn Alfonsi describe being held in overcrowded cells with little access to sunlight, medical care, or basic hygiene. Several recount routine physical abuse, prolonged confinement, and psychological trauma. Their accounts paint a picture of a system built for punishment rather than due process, with detainees often unsure why they were there or how long they would remain.

Bari Weiss could not allow that, because, Jesus Christ, it makes Trump and his lackeys look bad. Kristi Noem is shown touring the prison, strutting past prisoners held in excruciating positions, standing in front of packed cells while speechifying about how these are the worst of the worst. She looks like Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.

So it got cancelled.

Except…it was briefly shown on Canadian networks before it was pulled. And someone recorded it — it looks like they just aimed a camera at a hotel room TV — and has made it available to the world.

Go watch it. Quick, before it is pulled down.

These motherfuckers, Kristi Noem, Bari Weiss, Donald Trump, the guards at the prison, the warden, are all evil monsters. They are committing war crimes, except that we aren’t at war, making it even worse. We are all complicit. We don’t get to claim that we didn’t know about the torture prisons — we know. You have no excuse. Are we going to tolerate this corrupt regime any longer?

After watching that video, I needed a cleanse. Maybe you do too — here’s Rage Against the Machine.

Nostalgia night

Last night, I was going to clean up a junk drawer in my office — you know, one of those places where you toss all the odds and ends you don’t quite know what to do with, and over a decade or two they accumulate a terrifying quantity of doodads and knick-knacks and geegaws that need to eventually be sorted. This is a perilous job because the drawer is stuffed with distractions, making it nearly impossible to make any progress in cleaning it up.

This time was no exception. First thing I found was a sheet of 35mm color slides, taken in 1988. Slides are annoying, I don’t know why I was shooting in that format, because the image is so small that you can’t really see anything that well, unless you have a slide projector and screen. I do not.

But the second thing I found was an old cheap slide scanner (I tell you, this drawer is full of strange things from an enchanted universe.) It wasn’t a great little gadget. I bought it once upon a time for cheap thinking I’d be able to get rid of those stupid 35mm slides, but it didn’t produce great output, so I gave up on that project and hurled it into the void of my junk drawer.

So. I’m standing there with a bunch of old slides and a slide scanner while I was trying to defeat that cluttered void. You know what happened next…I had to sit down and start feeding slides into the scanner to see what I had.

I was sucked back into 1988, when I had finished up grad school, was transitioning into a post doc in Salt Lake City, and all my beloved relatives were still alive. These slides were shot on a vacation to my parents’ home, while I was oblivious to what I was going to lose in a few short years.

This was my uncle Ed.

Ed was a bachelor who was full of stories. He was an MP in Germany at the end of WWII, which involved far less gunfire and far more shuttling around the country on trains. He then signed up for the merchant marine, and sailed around the south Pacific, collecting tattoos and bad habits. When he finally settled down with our grandmother, he was incapable of holding down a job, went on frequent benders, and threw away most of his money at the racetrack. Our parents warned us that he was a bad influence, and my father in particular was sometimes furious with him for his wastrel life style, especially when he showed up falling down drunk at our house.

But his nephews and nieces loved him (and so did my dad, actually), and he loved us back. He was the uncle who would take us to the drug store to buy comic books, or to the cheesy awful horror movies that our parents had no interest in wasting their money on. On weekends we’d spend the night at Grandma’s house with Ed, and we’d stay up late sprawled on the floor, reading comic books and watching Batman or The Avengers until the late night horror host would fire up some delightful Godzilla flick or something with Bela Lugosi or an unnaturally large creature, while Ed would fall asleep on the sofa. I can’t watch a Hammer film without once again hearing Ed snoring in the background.

And now he’s long gone.

This is my maternal grandmother, with my boys, Connlann and Alaric.

Grandma did not have a particularly happy life. She was trapped in, I think, a loveless marriage with my grandfather, who was a dysfunctional alcoholic who spent his days slurping down cheap beer and puffing constantly on cheap cigars. The cigars eventually killed him, giving him a bone cancer that required removal of his jaw, and grandma stood by him and tended him through an agonizing ‘recovery’ in which he was going through the screaming DTs and chemo. She was good to me while I was growing up, and I felt so sorry for what she was going through.

She lived for her grandchildren and great grandchildren. We should have visited her much more often, because as you can see even in this terrible photo, she lit up when the kids came to visit. We’d all go out for a treat — either to Arby’s for roast beef sandwiches, or to Dairy Queen for soft serve ice cream. She had a lot of great grandchildren, so I hope she got lots of visits and attention. We lived so far away it was rare for us to get up to Kent, Washington, but we always made a point to drop in with a couple of kids to cheer her up.

Grandpa did not survive the cancer, and Grandma is also gone now.

The junk drawer is not empty, not anywhere near it. I think it’s mostly cables and obsolete computer gear, but I fear that it has acquired a survival instinct and knows to bubble some terrifying nostalgia to the top if ever I should try to remove its contents. That’s how it has survived as long as it has.

IT

Consider this: ICE agents smashed in a car window in Minneapolis, and dragged a pregnant woman through the snow and ice on our cold hard streets, the week before Christmas.

Minnesotans on the scene reacted by shouting and throwing snowballs and ice at the thugs, because you must do whatever you can to stop the violence, and sometimes that means fighting back. The commenters online are full of hate for the helpless pregnant woman.

@chuckkugler1646
Why would a pregnant woman put herself in that situation? Wow is this a protest manipulation?

Blame the woman for existing.

@dianehaines1220
Unbelievable how the news will AlWAYS tell you that the illegal was pregnant, has autism, is breast feeding a 2 yr old, has cancer, has diabetes, has no criminal history (they committed a crime by being in the USA illegally), etc. Why, Media, do you always side with illegal aliens that have no authorization to be in the USA, and you give a Bleeding Heart story? Certainly you can do better!

I’m sarry, Diane, but most of us haven’t as thoroughly dehumanized “illegal aliens” (being in the US is not automatically a crime) as you have. These are human beings, and some of them will be pregnant, have autism, be breast feeding a 2 yr old, have cancer, have diabetes, have no criminal history, and a host of other human traits. They are people, not plastic mannequins lacking in all humanity, as you wish.

@DeannaEstrada-ki2ug
Get those criminals 🧊⛄🧊⛄🧊 ICE 🧊⛄🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸💯❤️🤍💙🦅👍😂🤣😂

There’s the mindless, hateful creature Diane was looking for.

Then I found this: WHEN IT HAPPENS by Tom Ellison. It made me feel a little better. I’m stealing the whole thing because I need this.

It’s been so long, you sometimes forget that eventually, IT will HAPPEN.

It’s impossible to say when IT will HAPPEN. But it can’t be too long until IT HAPPENS. Looking at the data (age, high-stress job, cardiac history), it is statistically plausible that IT will HAPPEN in the next thirty-six months.

Eighteen, if you factor in hamburger consumption and all the weird bruising.

Of course, it doesn’t feel right to want IT to HAPPEN. And it’s obviously not okay to try to make IT HAPPEN. That’s not what this is ABOUT, just to make things CLEAR LEGALLY as far as VARIOUS AGENCIES are concerned.

But regardless, IT is going to HAPPEN. So you’re allowed to think about IT.

Theoretically, some longevity breakthrough could happen that would enable IT to NEVER HAPPEN. Just the idea is PSYCHOLOGICALLY COMPLICATED. But realistically, IT will HAPPEN. After all, the medical research apparatus will shortly be fully dismantled, unless IT HAPPENS soon.

So, it’s fair to say that IT will happen. But you also prepare for the possibility, even if unlikely, that IT won’t HAPPEN for a long time. Some of you may not last long enough to see IT HAPPEN, which is RICH.

But you imagine where you might be, eventually, when you learn IT has HAPPENED.

Maybe you will wake up, anxious and scared and angry (i.e., normal).

Walk past the armed men and the protesters and the destitute.

Then, out of nowhere, the push notification from THE NEWS: “Breaking: IT Has HAPPENED.”

What will you feel like? When IT HAPPENS?

When IT HAPPENS, it will probably be FEELING. Just a huge, overwhelming sense of FEELING, the kind where you didn’t even realize how starved you were for FEELING. Punctuated with alternating waves of SECOND FEELING, as well as SENSATION.

Plus, a sudden absence of THIRD FEELING, which makes you realize the toll of A CONSTANT BASELINE OF LOW-GRADE THIRD FEELING for ten goddamn TIME PERIODS straight, even though you were still plenty aware of THIRD FEELING, trust me.

How might IT HAPPEN?

It may be morbid, but as it happens, there are many ways IT could HAPPEN.

Heart attack.

Golfing mishap.

An especially frightening NEWS SEGMENT on COASTAL CITY, which is generally not a statistically likely cause of IT HAPPENING, but is not out of the question, in THIS SPECIFIC CASE.

You may consider other WAYS IT might HAPPEN, especially when you are overwhelmed with THIRD FEELING.

You might then feel EMOTION, but don’t beat yourself up.

You wonder how THEY will react. When IT HAPPENS. It will probably be a complete SITUATION. It will be hard not to feel some amount of perverse SENSATION, watching THEIR POLITICAL FORTUNES.

And of course, you will have to tread carefully around RELATIVES, who will probably throw an absolute REACTION when IT HAPPENS. But WE can be MAGNANIMOUS in this new, post–IT HAPPENING world.

Still, you wonder what you’ll do, right after IT HAPPENS. Perhaps you will clutch your loved ones and watch TV, as the news anchors ACT APPROPRIATELY.

Perhaps you will SCREAM, out of OTHER FEELING.

Perhaps you will pop open a SPECIFIC BEVERAGE.

Perhaps you will scroll post after post.

Posts of INCREDULITY.

Posts of ANALYSIS OF WHAT COMES NEXT, WHICH CAN WAIT.

Posts of JOKES THAT EVEN YOU WOULD FIND TO BE IN POOR TASTE, NORMALLY, BUT NOT IN THIS CASE.

Posts SCOLDING THE PREVIOUS POSTS, AND POSTS REPLYING “WHATEVER MAN.”

Posts ABOUT OTHER TOPICS, AND IT’S LIKE, DON’T THEY KNOW IT HAPPENED?

Perhaps you will think of the countless people whose lives might have been DIFFERENT, if IT had HAPPENED sooner.

The important thing to remember, though, is that IT will HAPPEN.

I will not be magnanimous after IT HAPPENS. I want every enabler and apparatchik who went along with this tyranny to be torn down from their perches and deported in disgrace. I want to see the Potomac sanctified by the desecrated corpse thrown into it, as has been done with the Tiber and Thames. I want every wanna-be autocrat to know that there is nothing but shame and disgust awaiting them in the history books.

Let IT HAPPEN soon.

AI is a notorious confabulator

Chuck Wendig is a well-known author, and unsurprisingly, people are curious about him. He’s the subject of various harmless inquiries, and he has discovered, entertainingly, that AI makes up a lot of stuff about him. For instance, you can ask Google Gemini the name of his cat.

Unfortunately, Wendig is catless.

Well! That answers that. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, I actually do have a cat, as the *checks notes* Wengie Wiki will tell you. This isn’t unusual. Cats are very often little hide-and-seeky guys, right? Dear sweet Boomba is probably just tucked away in some dimensional pocket inside our house.

That leads him down a rabbit hole to discover that he has had and has multiple cats, swarms of cats, that have died and been replaced by other named cats, and he also has more dogs than he expected.

It’s a trivial example, but it illustrates a general problem with our brave new world of AI.

Generative AI is a sack of wet garbage.

Do not use AI for search.

DO NOT USE AI FOR SEARCH.

AI can’t even do the basic math right. Meanwhile it hallucinates endless nonsense things! So many false things! It would generate new false things if I gave it the same question string twice. This is only the tip of the iceberg for the weird things I got it to assure me were true.

I’ll pass the word on to my writing class next semester.

Then I was curious about what chatGPT thinks about my cat, so I asked it, even though I’m nowhere near as prominent as Chuck Wendig. Of course it had an answer!

“Mochi”? Wait until the evil cat finds out. It will be shredded.

I couldn’t resist clicking on the button to find out more about PZ Myers’ pets. I got a whole biography!

That’s a grade-school level essay, full of generic nonsense written to be bland and inoffensive, and could be applied to just about anyone. I’d accept it if it were written by someone in 3rd grade, but I’d still ask them where they got the information.

Notice that it doesn’t mention “spider” even once.

I repeat: DO NOT USE AI FOR SEARCH.

Try it. Tell me all about AI’s fantasies about your pets in the comments.

I envy them their coats

It’s unpleasantly cold this morning, and I was reminded of this old photo from the early years of the 20th century. That’s my great-grandfather Peter on the far left, with his sisters Karen and Marie, and his brothers Ole and Iver. I’m just impressed with their coats; I’d take any of the men’s coats right now. They knew how to dress for a Minnesota winter!