We live on Stupid World

I never got the appeal of that Jeopardy game show. The questions were mostly shallow trivia — you didn’t have to be particularly smart to answer most of them, and the gimmick of having to answer in the form of a question was the most superficial of contrivances, leading to tortured language in generating both the answers and the questions. I was unimpressed, the few times I saw it.

The game host died a while back, so they’ve added a new level of gimmickry: guest hosts! And who do they pick?

“Dr.” Oz. That quack.

To their credit, maybe, past contestants have petitioned the show’s producers to not do that, because Oz is just a bad human being. It might also be because they’ve been under the illusion that appearing on Jeopardy meant you were a clever dick, and this decision might actually expose the scam.

In other news about the decline of intellectual life in the world, Jordan Peterson and Elon Musk have been twittering back and forth about appearing on a podcast together to massage each others’ egos. I’m cringing already. Never forget, this is what Peterson thought was worth publishing in his book, Maps of Meaning.

Fine. You had a weird dream, Peterson. What kind of narcissist thinks that constitutes an academic discussion, let alone that it has “meaning”? People actually think Jordan Peterson is a brilliant guy!

OAN discovers that science is international!

Shock. Horror. The Chinese have been infiltrating and colonizing US scientific research programs!

Concern has continued to grow over China’s infiltration of American virus research labs after recent reports highlighted three Chinese military scientists trained by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who arrived at U.S. universities and research institutions in the late 90s only to later become involved in the COVID-19 saga.

They don’t say who is “concerned”, but this is the most trivial news. Throughout my career, I’ve worked with Chinese students, British students, Canadian scientists, German scientists, French scientists, Spanish scientists, Chilean scientists, Indian scientists… That’s the way it works. We don’t care about your borders. I’ve also had American colleagues who studied in the UK, the EU, Russia, where ever (I don’t know any who studied in China — the language barrier is a major obstacle, I think). Are we horrified if, for instance, someone studied infectious disease in Toronto and then takes a position at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center? Would that be an example of colonizing Canada to steal their precious medical expertise? It is, I guess, but there’s nothing nefarious about it. It’s routine.

On part of this, many believe China has colonized U.S. virus research programs. Important to mention is these programs are funded by the U.S. government or in other words — the U.S. taxpayer. There’s very little these U.S. virology programs do that China isn’t aware of and for many that’s a threat far too large to be ignored any longer.

Yes. We shouldn’t ignore it. We should encourage more of it. The free exchange of ideas assists the progress of science.

I have to note, though, that they use an evasive construct again: many believe. Who? It’s a sign of bad journalism when the writer plays this game. Name your sources, guy. I’m sure “many” would agree that we’ve trained many Chinese scientists (and scientists of many nationalities), but few would call that “colonization” or think it was a problem. China has a cadre of US-trained virologists? Yes, please. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, we’re experiencing a pandemic, more will occur in the future, and we need more virologists.

Of course, OAN has an agenda. Wouldn’t you know it, they’re trying to suggest that COVID-19 is the product of hostile Chinese military research.

One Chinese whistleblower claimed COVID-19 originated in laboratories overseen by China’s PLA by using bat coronaviruses ZC-45 and ZXC-21, which were then characterized and genetically engineered under the supervision of the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing and the Research Institute for Medicine of the PLA Nanjing Military Command.

As of now, the World Health Organization (WHO) has yet to confirm the origin of the virus. However, efforts to investigate have largely been obstructed.

Research into the origins of the virus has not been obstructed, unless by obstructed they mean that it fails to support the usual conspiracy theories. SARS-CoV-2 is not remarkably artificial at all — it is closely related to bat viruses, there is no discernable obstacle to their natural origin, and no evidence that they were manipulated in a lab. Novel variants have been popping up all over the place — do they think Chinese scientists around the world are tweaking the virus? (I shouldn’t say that, they might think that.)

Also, the Chinese military must be remarkably incompetent to have released their deadly engineered virus in China and disrupted their own economy, first.

Naomi Wolf’s brain worms have to reach the brain stem soon

As you should know, Naomi Wolf, former Clinton advisor, is now on the COVID denialism bandwagon. She has gotten worse. Much worse. She has come out with a video denouncing the COVID-19 vaccine as a nanotechnology upload that can be manipulated by developers. Mind control! Tracking! Who knows what nefarious schemes these people are up to.

Note: I have not seen the video. It’s banned everywhere because she’s spreading gross medical misinformation. She has talked about it on Twitter, though, and affirmed that she really wrote this.

You know, I read the Moderna website and the sources in my video about how the mRNA is not actually a vaccine but a software platform. I actually work with developers who create software so I understand how dangerous it is to have a tech in one’s body that can receive ‘uploads’.

Here’s a link directly to it, if you can’t believe she would say something so stupid. Oh, yeah, she works with software developers so she knows this is possible. She’s also the CEO of a data tech company so she has inside info on Apple’s time travel technology.

Untrue. ‘Time Travel’ as noted in my much-banned video, is an Apple product. A self-described Apple employee reported a product unveiled at a secret Apple product demo that used ‘Time Travel’ in a medical nanoparticle delivery technology. I am CEO of a data tech company so…

Oh boy. Time travel. That’ll be one killer app.

As a branding exercise, though, Wolf has some potent kool-aid. She’s got a fog of science denialists cheerleading everything she writes, and she got invited on the Tucker Carlson show. That’s peak internet famous, right? Getting to promote your nonsense on Tucker Carlson?

She’s so full of herself that now she has offered to join the Republican team in South Dakota.

@govkristinoem
I’ve been a lifelong Dem, Clinton/ Gore team advisor. I don’t agree w/many GOP positions. But basic liberty is being destroyed by Biden/Harris. If you run for Pres., restore freedoms, I’ll do all I can to mobilize support. Heck, I’d join your team if asked.

Please, please, please do.

Remember Milo Yiannopoulos?

Boy, that guy plummeted from far right wing darling to persona non grata fast. Now he has been banned from Parler, the “free speech” website, or more accurately, the “free speech for fascists and racists” site. You’d think he’d fit right in there.

He had taken to declaring that he was going to publicly post Ben Shapiro’s phone number, in the name of free speech, and then he started suggesting that he’d give a $500 bounty to people who murdered immigrants.

Fabulous. Soon I’ll never ever have to hear about Milo again.

I don’t find this BS soothing, either

I’m up at 4:30, and I don’t even have the excuse of going fishing. I’m just a jangly ball of stress right now, and also, we’ve got the bathroom taps open a little to prevent freezing, so all night long it’s drip-drip-trickle-gurgle, and it gets to you after a while. So I gave up trying to sleep and got up to get some work done and check my email.

Oh boy, the Noah’s Ark/DNA guy sent me more email about his “theory”.

On Rosh
Dear PZ Meyers,

A few weeks ago, I sent you a copy of my theory on human genetics and Noah’s Ark. Today, I am sending you a second part to my theory that gives special attention to the Scythian Horse Riders that I believe descend from Rosh the son of Benjamin. The theory will only take a few minutes of your time and could dramatically alter your view of the world. Next week, I plan on uploading my theory to youtube and I hope that it will get a lot of views.

This is what he sent me.

Sorry, I’m not going to bother uploading the “figures”, which seem to be random images extracted from various publications. This is not a theory. This is a guy plucking something out of Bin A, the Bible, and something out of Bin B, various scientific publications he barely understands, and declaring “Ha ha! They fit!” even if they don’t.

My view of the world continues on unaltered, my idea that there are a lot of loons out there sadly unperturbed. Confirmed, even.

He might actually succeed and get a lot of views on YouTube, since the YouTube algorithm is undiscriminating, except in the sense it seems good at launching talentless hacks into bewildering heights of popularity.

Yeah, I’ve told the Noah’s Ark/DNA guy to go away and stop sending me his lunacy, but another property of the deeply delusional is that they can’t imagine you wouldn’t be interested in their ravings.

The Legend of PZ terrifies the populace, once again

Oh, no — I have been not-invited to not-appear on a radio show about me.

Dear PZ,
I host a US radio show from here in the UK, with ArtistFirst Radio Network, which predominantly focuses on bullying and abuse.
A few years ago, you had an infatuation with attacking me. To this day, I have no idea what this was about, or even what provoked you.

Wait, what? This person is named Debra Rufini, and I had to look her up — she was gesturing maniacally on the interwebs at me back in 2008. I can tell you what “provoked” me: she was sending me dozens of emails, sometimes daily, in which she complained in the same way she is here. I responded to her first email, which was a list of 50 “proofs” for the existence of a god. It was very silly.

I replied to her frequent and obsessive emails precisely four times — while she was pestering me for over 5 years. To claim I had an infatuation with attacking her is contrary nonsense.

When I politely asked you, you cowardly ran away from facing up to me, hiding behind your website, insisting that I had an ‘obsession’ with you – one of the major traits of NPD; provoking, followed by victim blaming.
The subject of my last show was the serial killer, Rosemary West. After all my broadcasts covering abuse of all forms; from spiritual abuse carried out in the church, to Narcissistic Personality Disorder, it’s only right, and about time that I host a show exploring and examining my own bully – you!

Asked me what?

To claim I’m hiding behind my website is absurd. I’m right here, easily accessible, with my email right there (she’s had no problem finding it), and I’m not clear on what she expects as an alternative. I’m not going to show up in person at her front door — that would be stalkerish, and would suggest a degree of interest in her that simply isn’t there.

But sure, go on some tiny (or even popular) radio show and talk about me. Don’t care.

I would invite you to be my guest on next month’s show … but you will only run off into your mouse hole, gathering your flying monkeys along the way, enhancing the degree of bullying and abuse.
You targeted a weak and vulnerable person in me all those years ago. Justice will be served on behalf of myself and all the others you have targeted. You have other victims too, don’t you?!

Yes. I have other victims, just like Debra Rufini. People who regard me as evil personified, who I mostly have never heard of. Don’t care.

In preparation for this broadcast, I Googled; ‘PZ Myers- bullying.’ I was shocked, but not surprised at the amount of people you have attacked. What a vile individual. You have attacked Professor Dawkins, Atheistrev.com mentions how you mock and attack anyone who doesn’t agree with you, where you have been referred to as a bully. On another site, you have been referred to as a ‘bigot.’ You’re like an atheist Shirley Phelps-Roper. How easy it is for you to select online strangers from behind your keyboard.

Shocking! I must have mocked and attacked this atheistrev person, although I don’t recall and don’t know who they are. My victims are so numerous I can’t keep track of them!

I have made contact with all the websites which have exposed you for the despicable person you are, sending them this very message, and inviting them for comment, which of course you are free to immaturely post on your website in your usual pathetic manner. However, if you tweak it, as you’ve done so before, you will only be exposing yourself for the dishonest person you are.

All the websites? I don’t believe you. They are like the gnats flitting above the dungpiles on the prairie, too numerous to be counted. Do not underestimate my perfidy, I’ve been cultivating it for years.

I would never “tweak” one of her emails. Every detail is just too amusing. The last time I responded, I included her precise words as a screen capture to make sure no nuance was lost.

This email to you will be aired on the show. And, this is what happens when a bully’s weak victim grows wings of steel, and gets her own radio show. Bullies never win, even if it takes years later for justice to be served. For every anti bullying campaign, media event, or organisation, someone like you is responsible.

Soar high on those wings of steel, Ms Rufini! Don’t care.

Now I have to go add another email filter.

How to recognize a fool

Well there’s our problem. When wingnuts see a man with swastikas tattooed on his body, they think that’s antifa. Sorry, guy, that’s just the fa.

Although it should be said that the guy with the tats has seen the error of his ways, and has repudiated Naziism. You can’t judge a man by the mistakes of his past, I guess.

This, by the way, is Chris Loesch. Scraggly bearded, skimpy mustached Chris Loesch, who is so vain that he thinks curling a sparse few hairs with wax makes him look good.

That’s just an ongoing mistake. I’ll forgive him after he apologizes for his deeper crimes against humanity.

Jacob Wohl rides again!

Lung & oral cancers are nature’s way of cleaning out the barn.

Tell me if this strategy sounds familiar.

  1. Pick a target, any target, as long as the Trumpkins hate ’em.
  2. Pay a non-credible source to make up an unlikely story of sexual malfeasance.
  3. Hold a press conference in which the story palpably unravels.
  4. Profit!

That was the game plan in their phony accusations against Mueller and Warren, and their balloons collapsed so fast they sounded like a fast wet fart. Would you believe Wohl and Burkman have done it again? Only you may not have heard about it because the press doesn’t believe them anymore.

  1. They tried to discredit Anthony Fauci.
  2. They found a woman, Diana Andrade AKA Diana Rodriguez, willing to make up a story about Fauci.

    “He looked rich and powerful, and I love smart men with grey hair. He told me all about his fantastic career in medicine, so I went upstairs,” Rodriguez wrote of her fictional meeting with Fauci at the bar of the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C. After detailing some ineffective hotel bed wrestling and managing to flee with her honor intact, Rodriguez closed with the statement, “Now, when I see him on TV touted as some kind of hero, I want the nation to know the truth. This is my truth. This is my story.”

  3. They tried to recruit the media to report on the story. They mostly failed. Andrade later wrote to journalists confessing that she’d been paid.

    And that would have been that—until Saturday’s email, which included Andrade telling me, “The reality is that I’ve known Jacob since 2018 and that he charmed me into taking money to do this (see attached picture of us together),” taken when they were romantically involved. Also, that Wohl and Burkman “had me do something like this…back in January.”

  4. I fail to see what they gain from this nonsense. Does anyone believe anything they have to say any more?

To put the frosting on the cake, though, Andrade called Wohl and Burkman to express her unhappiness with her role, and most wonderfully, recorded the entire call, so we get to see the two con artists rationalizing their lies. It’s something.

“Let me tell you something, Diana,” says Burkman. “This guy shut the country down. He put 40 million people out of work. In a situation like that, you have to make up whatever you have to make up to stop that train and that’s the way life works, OK? That’s the way it goes.”

Andrade counters that he and Wohl are not taking COVID-19 seriously. “It’s not just any virus. I mean, it’s a huge deal….I think you guys think it’s something made up, and it’s not.”

“Mother Nature has to clean the barn every so often,” Burkman counters. “How real is it? Who knows? So what if 1 percent of the population goes? So what if you lose 400,000 people? Two hundred thousand were elderly, the other 200,000 are the bottom of society. You got to clean out the barn. If it’s real, it’s a positive thing, for God’s sake.”

“So, what? Survival of the fittest?” Andrade asks, a bit more pique in her voice. (The sense you are dealing with people who have an enthusiasm for eugenics can do that.) But Wohl’s not having it.

“Diana, look, can you just do this for me?” he says. “Can you just keep your mouth shut and just…just do it for me.”

Uh-oh. They said the quiet part of the Republican strategy out loud. It’s OK if the virus kills 400,000 people, because half of them are old and the other half are “the bottom of society”.

They don’t seem to have noticed that they themselves are the dregs.