All the infighting has exposed the truth about Elon Musk’s dedication to free speech. He has deprived a gang of right-wingers their little privileges and badges entirely because they have a political opinion that differs from his.

Several conservative critics of billionaire Trump surrogate Elon Musk were stripped of their verification badges on X, Thursday after publicly challenging Musk’s stance on immigration.

Trump ally Laura Loomer, New York Young Republican Club president Gavin Wax, InfoWars host Owen Shroyer, and the pro-Trump ConservativePAC were all stripped of their verification badges after criticizing Musk’s controversial remarks about American workers and foreign H-1B visa holders.

Their crime? They were too anti-immigrant. They opposed the use of H1-B visas to permit foreign tech workers to live and work in the US — Musk wants to keep a ‘loophole’ to allow some brown people to work for his companies. Musk is now using his power to silence critics. Is anyone surprised? I’m not.

I’m on Bluesky, but I’m not going to be smug about it — BlueSky also has the danger of centralized administration. They just haven’t flexed yet.

Donald Trump belched out a “christmas” message. It’s not the usual platitudes and well wishes, it’s instead a subconscious whine from the id of a demented tyrant. I’m not going to type this all out, so struggle with reading this mess…or don’t.

He keeps talking about seizing the Panama canal, annexing Canada, and taking over Greenland because “we need it”. I’m beginning to believe he’s really going to try to do it, somehow. Apparently, he’s going to try wheedling Canada into voluntarily ceding their sovereignty for lower taxes and the benefit of our “protection” (he’s openly asking for protection money, very Mafia). I don’t think Canadians are interested in being invaded by health care insurance companies, or being saddled with the kind of uncertainty about the future I have, and the only threat to Canada I know of right now is the USA. He has also deluded himself into thinking the inhabitants of Greenland want to be taken over by Donald Trump.

Panama is a different story. Now he’s falsely claiming that Chinese troops are in control of the canal — they aren’t, they’re investing lots of money in development in Panama — which is priming the MAGA clowns to justify military action.

I’m going to guess what’s going on in his mind. He knows his record as president was bad, and is going to get worse, although he thinks he can hide it with all this bluster. He’s trying to come up with something that will generate a positive legacy for him, and thinks that territorial expansion is just the thing to make him look like a strong leader. It’s what Putin did, after all. I think he’s also trying to pick out ‘easy’ targets (Canada has a history of wrecking American invasions, though, and I think he might find that a lot of American citizens would stand with our friend and ally to the north), because maybe he thinks Ronald Reagan looked tough invading Grenada.

The second half is just the typical whining about how everyone is picking on him.

25 days until this demented, delusional maniac is at the wheel of this country.

The Gaetz report is trickling out.

From the report: “The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”

More: “The record overwhelmingly suggests that Representative Gaetz had sex with multiple women at a 2017 Florida party, including the then-17-year-old, for which they were paid… Victim A recalled receiving $400 in cash from Representative Gaetz that evening, which she understood to be payment for sex. At the time, she had just completed her junior year of high school. Victim A said that she did not inform Representative Gaetz that she was under 18 at the time, nor did he ask her age.”

I can’t compete. I could talk about my experiments in spider sex, but all that’s happened is that the males have been attentive but cautious with the females, and all the black widow couples have settled down into a quiet domesticated co-existence. It’s not exciting at all! None of them are even taking drugs.

At least I can say that black widow spiders have a more conventional sense of morality than Matt Gaetz. Unless this portrait of Gaetz is accurate.

Watch out, Greenland (and Denmark!)

Watch out, Panama!

Donald Trump suggested Sunday that his new administration could try to regain control of the Panama Canal that the United States “foolishly” ceded to its Central American ally, contending that shippers are charged “ridiculous” fees to pass through the vital transportation channel linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Panama’s conservative president José Raúl Mulino, who was elected in May on a pro-business platform, roundly rejected that notion as an affront to his country’s sovereignty.

He is inspired by Putin, and wants to launch a few militaristic adventures. To start with, he’s selecting easy targets — it won’t take many troops to overwhelm Greenland, but Panama might be a little harder, given that we have plenty of bombs, but bombs disrupt traffic. The aftermath, when the entire world mistrusts us, might be much tougher. Let’s hope that congress and the courts (yeah, right) can check his bloody ambitions.

You know, the UK has managed to isolate itself from the rest of Europe, making itself vulnerable…

I’m noticing a troubling but interesting phenomenon: the sanctification of Saint Luigi.

I don’t care for this at all — it’s more than just my anti-religious attitude, but that given Luigi Mangione’s privileged background I doubt that he’s the class hero anyone expects. The over-reaction by the establishment is what’s driving this, though. I don’t think they’re going to calm their freakout, this trial is going to be a media spectacle and it’s going to get worse. You would think villains would realize that creating a public martyr and exhibiting fear is the last thing you want to do. I do wonder if Mangione is going to get an opportunity to orate on the stand, and if he’s going to be any good at it.

On the other hand, I can understand the response. Assassination is a common thing in America. Think about it: my earliest memory of a news event is the JFK assassination. Then there was the RFK assassination. Martin Luther King jr, Malcolm X. Harvey Milk. Everything the CIA did — they tried hard to assassinate Fidel Castro, and failed…but succeeded all over the place in Latin America. It’s hypocritical for Americans to be outraged at any one particular assassination, but maybe this time it’s because the target lacked any taint of leftiness, since those are the only acceptable political murder victims. Uh-oh. What do you mean, rich conservatives might get killed? That’s not the game.

And maybe it’s starting to sink in that also, in America, we have handed everyone a gun. Maybe a few dim capitalists are waking up to the danger they have created for themselves.

I don’t want anyone to get murdered, but…if someone Luigi’d Elon Musk I’d run out and buy cake and ice cream and have a party at home. There’s a whole class of overpaid morons that could be gunned down in a mass uprising that wouldn’t trigger a single tear drop from me, and I might even think we’d improve society by removing them.

They’re quite right to charge Luigi Mangione with terrorism. He’s one little molecule getting heated up in a pot that’s close to boiling, and he could inspire a lot of other people to undergo a phase shift. The powers that be should be terrified.

After the humiliating and ridiculous loss in November, you’d think the Democrats would decide to shake things up and change a few of the top brass. You’d think wrong.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) lost the bid to be the leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday, following reports that former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was actively plotting behind the scenes on behalf of her challenger, Rep. Gerry Connolly.

The 74-year-old Virginia Democrat ended up winning by a margin of 131 to 84 in a secret ballot vote taken by the entirety of the Democratic caucus.

In a report published by Punchbowl News last week, the outlet wrote that Pelosi was “actively working to tank” AOC’s bid and was “making calls” on behalf of Connolly.

Not only is Connolly old, but he was recently diagnosed with cancer. Pelosi just had hip replacement surgery.

Fresh off hip replacement surgery, Nancy Pelosi, 84, secured another victory. House Democrats on Tuesday afternoon decided that 74-year-old Gerry Connolly—who announced his throat cancer diagnosis in November—will serve as ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, besting 35-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a closed-door caucus vote. “Gerry’s a young 74, cancer notwithstanding,” said Virginia Democrat Don Beyer, a Connolly ally. Pelosi had opposed the 35-year-old’s run for the role, “approaching colleagues urging them to back Connolly over Ocasio-Cortez,” Axios reported last week.

Connolly will join fellow septuagenarians in top committee spots next year. Richard Neal, 75, will lead Democrats on Ways and Means while Frank Pallone, 73, will be the party’s top representative on Energy and Commerce. Eighty-six-year-old Maxine Waters will be the ranking member on the Financial Services Committee, and Rose DeLauro, 81, will helm the Democrats’ presence in Appropriations.

Jesus christ, this is insane. I can say that, because at 67 years old, I can recognize that my age is a limitation, and that I should be stepping back to let younger colleagues place their stamp on my institution. When I’m in my 70s and 80s, I should definitely not be the one shaping policy in my department — I’m already too remote from modern science in my field.

But the Democrats are wed to money and power, and they’re not going to shake it off.

In other democracies, the leadership of parties that have endured humiliating defeats like the one Democrats saw in November—or even just regular defeats—resign. That kicks off a process by which members determine a new, ideally more successful direction, represented by different people. But the Democratic Party isn’t really a “party” of the sort that exists in other democracies, with memberships and official constituencies, like unions, who have some say over how it’s governed. Members mostly make decisions based on their own interests rather than to drive some shared, democratically decided agenda forward.

That’s part of what’s so depressing about the Oversight Committee ordeal for the couple dozen journalists and political junkies who pay attention to that sort of thing. Pelosi and the old guard’s continued opposition to younger talent seems breathtakingly counterproductive in the face of the Democratic Party’s numerous challenges right now. Simultaneously, the House’s “resistance” to Trump and the GOP in the House will be led by people of all ages who don’t seem particularly interested in that project, despite having spent the entire election cycle warning that Trump’s Republican Party represents a second coming of fascism. If incoming House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries really believes that, then why is he advertising his willingness to work with the GOP? Why are so many other Democrats, for that matter, trying to make nice with Trump acolyte Elon Musk?

Capitalism and a gerontocracy — we are cursed. They’re going to lose the next election, and the next after that, aren’t they?

No scientist has ever looked at the state of science funding and thought it was great. The pressure is tremendous and the success rate for grants is dismal. But hey, it could get so much worse and probably will. The incoming administration is flagrantly anti-science.

Trump has been getting cozy with the Argentinan president, Javier Milei, and the two have been up to no good.

Last month, Milei pulled Argentina’s delegates out of negotiations at the United Nations COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, where world leaders were discussing how to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and pay for such efforts around the globe. The move came hours after he spoke with US president-elect Donald Trump, who has signalled that he will remove the United States from such negotiations when he takes office next month. Trump and Milei have expressed mutual admiration.

But guess what?

It has been one year since libertarian President Javier Milei took office in Argentina, and the nation’s science is facing collapse, researchers say. Milei’s agenda to reduce the country’s deficit and lower inflation — which had topped 211% last year — has meant that, as his administration’s slogan says, “there is no money” for science or anything else.

“We are in a very, very critical situation,” says Jorge Geffner, director of the Institute for Biomedical Research in Retroviruses and AIDS (INBIRS) in Buenos Aires. He adds that the Innovation, Science and Technology Secretariat, once the country’s main science ministry but downgraded by Milei to a secretariat with less power, is working with a budget that is one-third lower than last year.

Argentinian scientists who are paid by the government have lost up to 30% of their income, Geffner says. (As of 2022, the government funded about 60% of research and development in Argentina, and the rest came from the private sector and international contributions.) As a result, the country is facing massive brain drain. At INBIRS, about half of its staff members are either considering finding jobs in other countries or already doing the paperwork, Geffner adds.

Milei does not hold scientists in high regard.

Milei has not minced words about his feelings towards scientists. Rather than having their research subsidized by the government, he said during a forum in September, “I invite them to go out into the market. Investigate, publish and see if people are interested or not, instead of hiding like scoundrels behind the coercive force of the state”.

Scientists aren’t going to be friends with Trump, the flamboyant idiot who would appoint RFK jr to run the NIH and Elon Musk to shred the economy and wants to shut down public education, so I think we can expect the situation for science in this country to get progressively worse. Other countries already have saturated populations of scientists, so if there were to be a reverse brain drain, I don’t know where we could go. Does New Zealand have room for a million expatriated American scientists? Canada? Germany? For American science to abruptly collapse would be a catastrophe for the whole world.

I just finished a flurry of contract signing — my mother’s house is thiiiis close to being sold. We have a final hurdle of getting the lender’s approval, but my agent says there’s only like a 10% chance that they might have an objection. I’ll be surprised if all the dotted lines are signed by the new year, but otherwise, everything is imminent.

Also, this is Seattle.

Someone hacked the traffic signs. Keep it up, you weird radicals!