Now struggling to avoid falling for the naturalistic fallacy

The last two years have coarsened me. I read this story of the demise of a chimpanzee leader, and realized I’ve changed.

Chimps have been spotted killing and then eating their former tyrannical leader.

Jill Pruetz, an professor of anthropology, said that she found it “very difficult and quite gruesome to watch” the group of chimpanzees kill a member of their own community and then abuse the animal’s dead body.

Professor Pruetz has described how she saw a group of the animals discover the body of a chimp called Foudouko, a former leader of the Fongoli community who had since been exiled for five years and who was probably killed by members of the group. After they came across the dead body, they abused and ate it for nearly four hours, the Iowa State University anthropologist described.

Once I would have been horrified and thought this was a terrible, awful act.

Now I’m thinking, well, maybe this was a reasonable response. Perhaps this is simply a normal group of young chimps reacting appropriately. Maybe this is how state funerals ought to be conducted in the future.

Both sides. Both sides on this issue would have good people.

(Warning: there is video at the link.)

Maybe if they gave us profs big raises, we’d become more conservative

You know how Turning Point USA has a McCarthyite list of academics they don’t like, and also publishes the salaries of those faculty? I guess it’s to make citizens outraged at how much money they’re paying to support radicals in the ivory tower. Just to put it all in perspective, though:

Those football coaches are probably more conservative than the professors, though, so that makes it all OK.

I thought about it some more. It’s not going to work. There are 1½ million professors in the US. If some filthy rich multibillionaire decided to try and influence us all by sinking a billion dollars into bribing us that would only be $666 each, in a one-time investment in one year.

Suddenly it all makes sense. Far cheaper to buy a few influencers, give them a prop fake university — a Prager U or some right wing think tank — and get them to spend all their time promoting pseudo-intellectualism to the rubes. In case you were wondering what the Intellectual Dark Web is actually all about.

ASMR for engine nerds

There are underwater microphones installed around San Juan Island, and they are streaming live continuously to the internet. It’s called OrcaSound, and it’s supposed to be about hearing whale songs, but I’ve been listening for the last hour and all I hear are boat engines. It’s soothing, actually: a kind of continuous rumble, with a rhythmic throb. One boat just went by that has a weird syncopated rattle, and it slowly rises as it gets closer and fades as it passes by. And just now a second engine has joined the chorus — it sounds like sawing wood. If you like percussion and a good background drone, check it out.

I’d probably be startled out of my zen state if a whale started singing.

Also, one has to wonder whether the orcas are fans of all the noise pollution in their neighborhood since the apes started flopping around in their ocean.

Uh-oh. It’s getting intense right now. Gotta zone out.

Don’t declaw your cats

My daughter’s cat, Midnight, was declawed — not by us, we adopted him from a shelter — and it’s a terrible practice, barbaric and cruel. Poor old beast, first that indignity, and now he has to share his human’s affections with a brand new baby.

But here’s one bit of good news, too late for Midnight: New Jersey is banning the declawing of cats. One state down, 49 more to go.