You don’t need to be wise to appeal to our power brokers

Squint harder, ya dork

If you are anything like me, you are eagerly anticipating the day that either Trump drops dead (preferably slowly, and in agony), or that Congress grows a spine and asserts its constitutional authority to slap the old fart down. The former is probably much more likely. Unfortunately, just seeing Trump hog-tied or buried in a shallow grave on one of his golf courses does not solve our problems — JD Vance is waiting in the wings, and he might be even worse. While Trump is amoral and greedy, Vance has a terrifying ideology driving him. He’s an acolyte of Thiel, and Thiel is an acolyte of Curtis Yarvin.

Curtis Yarvin is almost incomprehensibly popular among rich Silicon Valley libertarian/authoritarians, but I would guess one source of their esteem is Yarvin’s constant sucking up to the wealthy. They should rule the world, he thinks; democracy is bad, and we should let tech parasites be our overlords. Only problem with his perspective is that he’s a moron. Daniel Drezner sums him up.

My considered reaction: at least with the likes of, say, Marc Andreessen, some effort is required to parse out his true-but-not-new points from his new-but-not-true points.1 With Yarvin, it’s much simpler: pretty much everything he says in this interview is wrong. There is no kernel of an interesting idea gone bad; there is just a bunch of half-baked analogies that fall apart if you have a decent liberal-arts education. It’s like listening to a stoned, first-year MBA student who read his father’s outdated history books when he was a teenager and half-remembers them.

I’ve read some of Yarvin’s online work, but not much. It’s self-serving drivel, and anyone with any intelligence will recognize that within a few paragraphs. I think Elizabeth Spiers recognizes the problem.

The most appropriate treatment of Yarvin is one that recognizes his influence on Silicon Valley billionaires who don’t recognize him as a shallow thinker bc they’ve never taken a single class on political philosophy or history or philosophy

So yeah, kids, get a liberal arts education or you might end up as stupidly blinkered as a Yarvin or Andreesen or Thiel or Musk. Maybe my university ought to consider that for a slogan (our current advertising mantra is “More Is Morris,” which is short but not very deep. Don’t worry, they’ll probably change it next year.)

There’s a longer article on Yarvin in the New Yorker, but he’s hardly worth the extensive coverage — my feeling reading anything about him is that anyone pays attention to him. Here’s a short summary of his agenda.

In the spring and summer of 2008, when Donald Trump was still a registered Democrat, an anonymous blogger known as Mencius Moldbug posted a serial manifesto under the heading “An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives.” Written with the sneering disaffection of an ex-believer, the hundred-and-twenty-thousand-word letter argued that egalitarianism, far from improving the world, was actually responsible for most of its ills. That his bien-pensant readers thought otherwise, Moldbug contended, was due to the influence of the media and the academy, which worked together, however unwittingly, to perpetuate a left-liberal consensus. To this nefarious alliance he gave the name the Cathedral. Moldbug called for nothing less than its destruction and a total “reboot” of the social order. He proposed “the liquidation of democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law,” and the eventual transfer of power to a C.E.O.-in-chief (someone like Steve Jobs or Marc Andreessen, he suggested), who would transform the government into “a heavily-armed, ultra-profitable corporation.” This new regime would sell off public schools, destroy universities, abolish the press, and imprison “decivilized populations.” It would also fire civil servants en masse (a policy Moldbug later called RAGE—Retire All Government Employees) and discontinue international relations, including “security guarantees, foreign aid, and mass immigration.”

It wouldn’t be of much concern if Yarvin was just a crank with a blog, but he has become a crank with influence on some very powerful people.

A decade on, with the Trumpian right embracing strongman rule, Yarvin’s links to élites in Silicon Valley and Washington are no longer a secret. In a 2021 appearance on a far-right podcast, Vice-President J. D. Vance, a former employee of one of Thiel’s venture-capital firms, cited Yarvin when suggesting that a future Trump Administration “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people,” and ignore the courts if they objected. Marc Andreessen, one of the heads of Andreessen Horowitz and an informal adviser to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has started quoting his “good friend” Yarvin about the need for a founder-like figure to take charge of our “out of control” bureaucracy. Andrew Kloster, the new general counsel at the government’s Office of Personnel Management, has said that replacing civil servants with loyalists could help Trump defeat “the Cathedral.”

If Trump were to die, Stephen Miller’s influence might diminish somewhat (a good thing), but he’d be replaced by Curtis Yarvin as advisor, with every Silicon Valley venture capitalist breathing over his shoulder, urging him on to empower mega-capitalism. Yarvin is a scary extremist dude.

As his ideas have been surrealized in DOGE and Trump has taken to self-identifying as a king, one might expect to find Yarvin in an exultant mood. In fact, he has spent the past few months fretting that the moment will go to waste. “If you have a Trump boner right now, enjoy it,” he wrote two days after the election. “It’s as hard as you’ll ever get.” What many see as the most dangerous assault on American democracy in the nation’s history Yarvin dismisses as woefully insufficient—a “vibes coup.” Without a full-blown autocratic takeover, he believes, a backlash is sure to follow. When I spoke to him recently, he quoted the words of Louis de Saint-Just, the French philosopher who championed the Reign of Terror: “He who makes half a revolution digs his own grave.”

How does this bozo get the attention of media and influence so many of the assholes in power? I’ve been doing it wrong. If I want to be rich and popular, I really need to start praising the rich and popular, telling them that they deserve to rule the world.

I’ll try that right now.

…

Any minute now.

…

Urk…

…

…

Sorry, I just can’t bring myself to be that stupid and craven. Sorry. I’d rather just fade away into obscurity.

In which I defend AI

Don’t be too shocked, but I think AI does have some utility, despite the occasional hallucination.

A Utah police department’s use of artificial intelligence led to a police report stating — falsely — that an officer had been transformed into a frog.

The Heber City Police Department started using a pair of AI programs, Draft One and Code Four, to automatically generate police reports from body camera footage in December.

A report generated by the Draft One program mistakenly reported that an officer had been turned into a frog.

“The body cam software and the AI report writing software picked up on the movie that was playing in the background, which happened to be ‘The Princess and the Frog,” Sgt. Rick Keel told FOX 13 News. “That’s when we learned the importance of correcting these AI-generated reports.”

We use AI at my university for that purpose, too. Ever sit through a committee meting? Someone has to take notes, edit them, and post them to a repository of meeting minutes. It’s a tedious, boring job. Since COVID moved a lot of those meetings online, we’ve found it useful to have an AI make a summary of the conversation, sparing us some drudgery.

Of course, someone should review the output and clean up the inevitable errors. The Heber City police didn’t do that part. Or maybe they did, and someone found the hallucination so funny that they talked about it.

A stupid person is in control of the US

I am horrified by this incompetent man who is running the country.

The White House Doctors have just reported that | am in “PERFECT HEALTH,” and that | “ACED” (Meaning, was correct on 100% of the questions asked!), for the third straight time, my Cognitive Examination, something which no other President, or previous Vice President, was willing to take. P.S., | strongly believe that anyone running for President, or Vice President, should be mandatorily forced to take a strong, meaningful, and proven Cognitive Examination. Our great Country cannot be run by “STUPID” or INCOMPETENT PEOPLE!

We should not allow our country to be run by “STUPID” or INCOMPETENT PEOPLE!, which is why Trump should be impeached and his entire administration dismissed, ultimately to be arrested and tried. He is providing the evidence himself: you do not ask people to take a cognitive test unless you suspect there may be a cognitive problem, and asking them to take the test three times suggests that there is a deep problem here.

He is in cognitive decline. He’s also in poor health, to the point that he is tweaking his medication against all medical advice. He’s taking 4 times the recommended daily dose of aspirin.

They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart. I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?

I know a little bit about this, with my history of cardiac problems. Initially they had me taking baby aspirin, low dose aspirin, but then the doctors decided, on the basis of evidence, that this wouldn’t help. So guess what I did? I stopped taking it. I didn’t quadruple the dose.

He’s a stupid, ignorant old man.

Yet somehow this man holds unfettered power; he can, basically on a whim, without congressional approval, invade a foreign country and snatch up the elected leader of that country. Venezuela sets an ugly precedent. I guess we couldn’t complain if the EU swept in and scooped up our president (please do, we’ll welcome you with flags and parades).

Worse, he’s declaring that this sudden snatch-and-grab means we’re now in charge, that we “run” Venezuela, and he has admitted that the motive was simple greed, to steal their oil. We tried this in Iraq, at the cost of a million lives and trillions of dollars. Are we supposed to believe that this will work this time?

I need a stronger word than “worse,” because now Stephen Miller is talking about taking over Greenland.

One of President Donald Trump’s closest aides, Stephen Miller, questioned Denmark’s claim on Greenland and suggested the U.S. could seize it without pushback, stoking concern among European allies.

Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, Miller sidestepped questions of whether the U.S. will use military force to take Greenland, a territory of Denmark, and said the president has been “clear for months” that the U.S. should have it.

“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller said in the Jan. 5 interview.

We are so fucked. The whole world is fucked.

Why 99% of scientists believe in evolution

The answer is a lot simpler than Nathaniel Jeanson thinks. It’s because creationism is bullshit.

The gentleman to the left is Nathaniel Jeanson, a guy who went to all the trouble of getting a PhD from Harvard, only to use his diploma to lend some authority to his young earth creationist beliefs. He’s not a serious person. He is employed by Answers in Genesis, and made a short video to answer the question, “Why 99% of Scientists Believe in Evolution”. He’s going to fail.

Why work so hard to keep creation science out?

We don’t. Creation science is so patently silly that we don’t have to work very hard at all to keep it out of our classrooms. It’s also so trivial that…what would we do? A single semester is 15 weeks long, with about 45 hours of lecture time. There isn’t enough substance in creationism to fill that amount of time, while evolution is so data- and concept rich that we can’t cover it adequately in a multi-year program.

The answer is simple. Evolutionists must believe that scientists become evolutionists if that’s what they’re taught.

Well, yes. We teach students to evaluate the evidence and see the utility of sound, testable explanations, and then when we teach them about evolution, they should accept it. We also think that if you’re properly taught about calculus or chemistry, they should accept mathematics or chemistry.

What is Jeanson’s problem here? Does he think it’s abnormal that students can learn?

I see no other explanation for the evolutionists’ behavior. Evolutionists must believe with all their heart that students adopt the position that they’re taught.

What behavior? I teach the subject I’m trained to teach, and that I have long experience in studying. What other explanation does he need?

As for the idea that students adopt the position they’re taught…he’s clearly never been a teacher. Students resist learning new ideas. Teaching is hard work on both the instructor’s side and the students’ side, and no, we don’t expect students to accept as fact everything we tell them. They have to think it through critically, and test ideas against the evidence.

In short, there is a simple explanation for why 99% of scientists reject my young earth creation position in favor of evolution. It’s because evolution is all they’re ever taught.

That claim falls with a loud clunk. A simpler explanation: we reject your young earth creationism because it’s bogus and unsupported by any credible evidence.

It’s also not true that evolution is all they’re taught. Most of my students were brought up Christian, have read at least bits and piece of the Bible, are soaking in a credulous culture where Noah’s Ark, for instance, is a familiar meme. Most scientists are entirely familiar with the mythology common in their society, and we’ve heard it all. It just doesn’t hold up to any critical scrutiny.

Is this all you’ve got, Nathaniel? Accusing everyone who disagrees with you of having been indoctrinated into a dogma, while you yourself are employed at a business that demands unquestioning obedience to a statement of faith?

Speaking of disease…

Another little change in national health policy has occurred.

States will no longer be required to report how many children they vaccinate to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), according to a December 30 letter to state health officials.

Maybe if we pretend that infectious disease no longer exists, it will stop happening. Crawl under your bed, close your eyes, and the horrible monster will disappear.

This is just the first phase, though. Over a year ago, Florida was pioneering the way forward.

As Florida moves to become the first in the United States to drop all childhood vaccine requirements, critics have warned of the plan’s potentially deadly public health consequences.

The move would scrap all required vaccine mandates for children, including those required for school attendance, such as polio, diphtheria, rubeola, rubella, pertussis, mumps and tetanus.

The state’s Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, a longtime vaccine skeptic, on Wednesday compared school vaccine mandates to slavery, calling them “immoral” intrusions on parents’ rights.

“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body? I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God,” he said.

Children won’t be dying, if we stop reporting on it. Brilliant.

On a related note, I just saw this comment from Gwen Pearson that fits perfectly.

If you have ever dealt with lice, you know that they’re terribly difficult to get rid of, especially if one of the kids’ playmates is constantly recontaminating your family with the problem — if it’s happening at school, everyone in the classroom must take steps to eradicate the nits and lice. It’s the same story with measles, or whooping cough, or polio. Awareness is key, and our government wants to blind us.

It’s a pit of disease as well as ignorance

Nobody should be surprised by this:

Today (1/1/26) the Kentucky Department for Public Health announced that an unvaccinated, out-of-state individual with measles visited the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky, on December 29, 2025. Local and regional health departments are scrambling to warn and inform the public.

It’s only what should be expected, given Ken Ham’s beliefs about disease prevention.

During the Covid pandemic and lockdown, Ken Ham railed against mask mandates, was involved in lawsuits against OSHA vaccine requirements and was ambivalent about vaccines. When writing about vaccine mandates and Covid lockdowns, Mr. Ham said:

Certainly, people died from the virus, although I think we are all confused at what the actual statistics are. People die every day from all sorts of diseases. But once a person dies, God’s Word tells us they will spend eternity in heaven or hell. So how essential is the church, the body of Christ (of which AiG is a part of), for people’s well-being? It is vital.

Once again, I’m wishing I believed in Hell…but only for Christians like Ken Ham.

Not even cool enough to be cyberpunk

Guess where I’ve been this morning?

I had a blood vessel pop in my eye a while back, and I had a follow-up check-up today. My eyes are still there. I still have an annoying blind spot in my right eye, just north of center, and it’s never going to go away, right up to the day I die. Oh well.

My eyes are still good enough that I can see that annoying tuft of hair rising up vertically front and center in my scalp. I’m turning into Tintin. An old, bearded, gray Tintin. So it goes.

Now I have to stop for a while — I got the usual pupil dilation eyedrops. Everything is blurry with bright star-like fringes around it, and it hurts to look at the screen.

Jesus has been arrested

It’s about time.

Jesus was running a camp for the homeless in Alabama — which sounds exactly like what the reincarnated Jesus would do — when the cops rousted him and his followers, broke up the camp, and arrested many of the people there. Personally, I don’t like the cult thing, but there ought to be a better way to deal with the poor and homeless than arresting for the crime of existing while destitute.

The religious group leader, who described himself to WBRC 6 as “the only begotten son of the living God,” recalled waking up to the warrant being executed after hearing a noise.

Now that part is just weird, but people are allowed to believe weird stuff. It’s not criminal.

The leader also told the outlet that he felt that the authorities’ approach was heavy-handed.

Yes, it was, and totally inappropriate. We live in one of the richest countries in the world, and it is obscene that so many people are forced to live in tents in a forest while Elon Musk is squatting on $700 billion dollars.

But I must remind the current incarnation of “the only begotten son of the living God” that his earlier incarnation was treated rather more harshly than he is. Not that that excuses the cops or the landowner, but we should keep in mind how the unchecked power of the state could be used.

Let Jesus go.

The scandals keep dribbling out

Swankiest little whorehouse in Palm Beach

Everything Trump says is, at best, a half-truth. He’s been claiming that he kicked Epstein out of Mar-A-Lago because he was poaching his employees, which is partly true. What he doesn’t mention is that this was after years of privileged access to resort employees. We have more details published in the Wall Street Journal.

Per the report published on Tuesday, Trump sent young women who worked for the Palm Beach resort to Epstein’s home for massage sessions, a perk afforded to some members of the Florida club. The resort kept up this practice for years, even though Epstein was not a member of the club.

The outlet reported that “the house calls went on… even as spa employees warned each other about Epstein.” Employees told the paper that Epstein “known among staff for being sexually suggestive and exposing himself during the appointments.”

Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell is known to have used the resort to recruit women and girls for the late sex trafficker. One of Epstein’s most vocal accusers, Virginia Giuffre, was pulled into Epstein’s orbit while working at Mar-a-Lago. Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year, had refuted accusations that Trump was involved in Epstein’s sex crimes.

The president said earlier this year that Epstein’s poaching of employees like Giuffre was part of the reason their friendship came to an end. The report dug into the much-discussed falling out between Trump and Epstein in 2003. Per employees who spoke to the outlet, Trump barred Maxwell and Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after an 18-year-old employee returned from a house call and said that Epstein “pressured her for sex.”

Mar-A-Lago was a pedophile hunting ground for years and years, and even if Trump didn’t directly rape any young women, he was an enabler who turned a blind eye to Epstein/Maxwell calling up and asking to have women delivered for “massages”.