I feel like I need to apologize for whatever smug twit thought it was clever to put that “II” in the middle of “Gladiator”. Its appearance in the title card was, however, the last bit of wit in this entire movie, and was also representative of the botched, gimmicky plot of the sequel.

First, the historical background, even though it really doesn’t matter. In the early 200s CE, Caracalla, a Gallic soldier, was emperor of Rome for about 20 years; his brother, Geta, was briefly co-ruler before he was assassinated by the Praetorian Guard. Caracalla himself was also murdered by the Praetorian Guard, and was succeeded by Macrinus, the Praetorian prefect, who only ruled for about a year before he lost a battle near Antioch and got himself executed. There. That’s more history than you need, because this movie is going to jettison everything but the names and compress everything down to a couple of days one summer in Rome. Time has no meaning.

The gladiiator in the title is a soldier who is captured in the battle which led to Rome conquering Numidia…sometime around 200 CE. Wasn’t Numidia annexed by the Emperor Augustus, somewhat before then? No matter, this isn’t history. He’s hauled off to Rome as a slave, thrown into the arena, and kills a mangy monkey (I’m not belittling the accomplishment, it really is one hideous, terrifying baboon with huge fangs and a temper, so good on him.) The emperors, a pair of drooling psychopathic halfwits that I mentally labeled as Short Ed Sheeran and Tall Ed Sheeran, were impressed, as were some rebellious senators, as was his mom. It turns out that Gladiiator is the son of the gladiator from the first movie! It’s a hereditarian miracle!

Anyway, there are some more fights in the arena, including a spectacular naval battle. Tall Ed Sheeran gets murdered, and then Short Ed Sheeran gets murdered, and then, somehow, Gladiiator gets a legion to march on Rome, which is confronted by a Roman legion. The ending gets very confusing as Gladiiator is teleporting all over the place to wherever the plot finds convenient; also, Rome seems to be very tiny, as he ends up posing by the singular Gate of Rome, with the whole city laid out behind him, which is mostly empty except for one prominent feature, the Colosseum, of course.

In a climax fitting for a Marvel superhero movie, the cunning, scheming, clever primary bad guy gets on a horse and gallops to the space between the two legions, dismounts, and gets into a one-on-one swordfight with the monkey-killing gladiiator. It made no sense. Nothing in this movie makes sense. Time and space are meaningless. Murderous ridiculous clowns can rule the world, which is at least believable now in the 21st century.

I was not entertained.

Since this is what it means to be a religious Christian:

He makes a good case for keeping Christians out of the state government. That’s a very un-American sentiment, to claim that our government is sectarian and religious.

Reminder: here’s the “LGBTQ filth” he wants to eradicate.

I know it’s not as impressive as the mammoth, but it gives AMAB people an edge in rugby, therefore trans athletes should be banned. So saith Sean Ingle, chief sportswriter for the increasingly transphobic Guardian.

As he repeated many lies about trans women in sport, whether through ignorance or malice, Ingle said, And going back to the start with the science is to have a separate, exclusive, preserved category for natal females with trans women and trans men then going into an open, universal category. And those that support this approach point to the recent science that suggests that even when testosterone is reduced, strength in transgender women only goes down 5%.

Most of that advantage for male puberty is retained. They also point out, and I hear this a lot, that women are not men with lower testosterone. They point out there are thousands of physical differences between males and females, and they aren’t always obvious.

Females tend to have better peripheral vision than males. Males, in contrast, are quite as fast[sic?] at accurately detecting the trajectory of a moving object. That is, how fast it’s moving, in which direction it’s moving, and where it’s going to be 1 second from now.

That’s helpful when you’re trying to chuck a spear at a rabbit. If you’re going back to evolutionary biology times, it’s also helpful when you’re trying to intercept a rugby ball. My general view here is that The Guardian should be at the heart of all this and that we should write about the subject fearlessly.

Ah, even sportswriters have absorbed the biases of evolutionary psychology. Now men, not women, have evolved to be better at throwing spears.

These glib comparisons always make me wonder what was being compared in these studies. All women tend to have better peripheral vision than men? What if you compared men, in general, to women tennis players? Is it still true? Isn’t it quite likely that peripheral vision, and the ability to calculate trajectories, are plastic and responsive to practice?

Also, how large is the variation within men, and within women? Aren’t we really dealing with selected subsets of populations, making blanket claims about the aggregate abilities of diverse populations rather problematic?

The whole premise is flawed. It assumes that men of the paleolithic were specifically and exclusively selected for spear chucking, that women of that time had no use for that talent, and that some epigenetic factor inhibits the genetic spear-chucking complex in women. No evidence for any of that. Then we have to assume that there was no further selection for or against that complex for 100,000 years — men retained a fairly specific ability through many generations of life farming. Then we assume further that whatever epigenetic modifiers allow for enhanced spearchucking in men, they don’t include things like testosterone that might be blocked by inhibitors — these hypothetical male advantages sail through everything that affects trans women unaffected.

But sure, if you’re an evolutionary psychologist sportswriter, you can just propose that whole chain of improbabilities as a given and call it “science” or “biology,” all in the name of transphobia. I call it magical thinking.

Seriously, dude? Steven Pinker is peddling NFTs now?

On March 14th at 7pm ET, thought leader and Harvard professor Steven Pinker will release digital collectibles of his famous idea that “Free speech is fundamental”.

These collectibles will guarantee recurrent access to intimate group video calls with Pinker to discuss this topic for the next several years.

Two tiers will be available: the gold collectible, which is unique and grants the buyer the right to co-host the calls with Pinker, will be priced at $50,000; the standard collectibles, which are limited to 30 items and grant the buyers the right to access those video calls and ask questions to Pinker at the end, will be priced at 0.2 Ethereum (~$300).

The NFTs will be available for purchase on the Polemix NFT platform. Holders of the NFTs can expect to book their first call with Pinker as soon as two weeks following their purchase; thus receiving utility for the NFTs shortly after.

HIS famous idea that “Free speech is fundamental”? And all it is is a picture of Pinker with the words “free speech is fundamental” printed on it? Here you go, I’ll save you $50,000, although I can’t provide the phone call.

My first thought: this has to be a joke, a satirical web page made to poke fun at the self-importance of these IDW gomers.

It’s not. Pinker himself promoted it.

Jesus. It is a big joke, a joke named Pinker.

Except…apparently they’ve already sold out. Maybe humanity is the joke.

Admire this work of art.

That’s beautiful.

As you’ve probably heard, Cardinal Pell is dead and will be buried in the Vatican tomorrow. The news has been strange — I’m not seeing much talk about his child sex abuse history, since he was acquitted, after all. All was forgiven, the Catholic church was relieved to be let off the hook.

On the day of Pell’s acquittal in 2020, Francis offered his morning Mass for all those who suffer from unjust sentences, which he compared to the persecution of Jesus.

Ironic, then, that the latest scandal is the discovery of a memo written by Pell.

Australian Cardinal George Pell was lying in state on Friday, with funeral preparations overshadowed by revelations that he was the author of an anonymous memo that branded Pope Francis’ pontificate a catastrophe.

You don’t expect loyalty from a junkyard dog, do you? He was just a mean-spirited, nasty little man. He was the kind of rabid conservative who hated science and did immense harm to society.

The late Cardinal George Pell left a legacy of climate science denial which – in his later years – became ever more distanced from reality and the position of the Catholic church.

For decades in newspaper columns and speeches, Pell popularised climate denial talking points to dismiss the science of global heating and to brand environmentalists as hysterical and in the grip of a pseudo-religion.

What’s impressive is that Pell was one of the few people who could make a positive contribution to humanity by simply dropping dead.