Predictability

Donald Trump has reacted to Elizabeth Warren’s speech. How, you might wonder? Guess.

If your bet was placed on “demeaning nickname, ethnic slur, and fact-free insult”, you’re a winner! Unfortunately, everyone bet that way, so this was basically an even odds gamble, and you just get your money back.

I was tempted to put a nickel on “substantive, intellectual response” because the odds on that meant I’d be a millionaire now, but decided it would just be throwing away five cents.

Warren replies.

The problem with games

The hot new game of the hour seems to be Overwatch — it looks fun and very well done, and a lot of my online friends are playing it. But I’m not even tempted. Zero interest. Don’t even want to try.

Why? Because it’s a multiplayer game, and hell is other people.

I used to play World of Warcraft, and what finally drove me to give it up was that there were big chunks of the game I could not play — not because of what Blizzard had done, but because I’d have to team up with assholes, and it was incredibly frustrating to have to drop out of a group because someone in it was a homophobic racist with a mouth. Note: and it was always me leaving voluntarily. I never once saw a group kick out the bigot.

Actually, it was something Blizzard did: the absence of any policy against hate speech is a kind of action, too.

And now for the deeper dose of reality

Here’s the basic political reality right now: Hillary Clinton has the nomination. Trump is a colossal raging goon. I think the Democrats are going to have a field day romping over the Republicans.

But there is danger in that attitude, the problem of complacency and of being able to continue in the same old unsuccessful way, because the opposition is a lunatic. Matt Taibbi explains the problem brilliantly. If there’s anything we should learn from the Democratic campaign so far, it’s that there is a rising insurgency, a dissatisfaction with business as usual, and the victory of the establishment candidate means that the conservative leadership of the Democrats can heave a sigh of relief and can avoid making substantive changes in how power is administered.

[Read more…]

“thin-skinned racist bully”

I wish it were Bernie Sanders who had the nomination, but short of that, I am anticipating a spectacular campaign season, now that the Democratic focus is going to be exclusively on taking out Trump, rather than internecine warfare. Here’s Elizabeth Warren, taking the gloves off and giving us a preview of what is to come.

That’s a thing of beauty. Not only is she sinking Trump, she’s stitching the Republican establishment into the sack with him. This is precisely what we need, to not only campaign against the short-fingered vulgarian bigot, but to wreck the rest of party that’s propping him up.

Parks have rules for a reason

Jebus, people. Lately it’s nothing but bad news about people doing stupid things in our national parks: ignoring signs and strolling out to fragile ponds, picking up abandoned bison calves, getting up close to adult bison and getting trampled for their trouble, and now the most horrible story of them all: a young man left the boardwalk and fell into a boiling hot spring.

The grisly death of a tourist who left a boardwalk and fell into a high-temperature, acidic spring in Yellowstone National Park offers a sobering reminder that visitors need to follow park rules, park officials and observers said.

Efforts to recover the body of Colin Nathaniel Scott, 23, of Portland, Oregon, were suspended on Wednesday after rangers determined there were no remains left in the hot spring.

There’s just a thin mineral crust over the seething water, which is highly acidic, so boiling a body in that for a day leaves nothing. Stay on the designated trails. Wild animals are wild and active volcanic springs are deadly dangerous.

Also to keep in mind, besides personal danger: it’s a good thing the body dissolved, because park rangers were risking their lives trying to recover the remains, until it became pointless.

Dennis Prager has just two questions for atheists

They’re enlightening, because they tell us just how screwed up his preconceptions are. His two questions are:

1. Do you hope you are right or wrong?

2. Do you ever doubt your atheism?

What’s most interesting is how Prager answers the questions, exposing his own assumptions. So in response to his first question, this is how he thinks atheists ought to answer.

[Read more…]

A Tim Hunt retrospective

Just when you thought it was safe to get back on the internet, Dan Waddell reminds us of the explosion of nastiness in the Tim Hunt sexism affair. The short summary:

The first part of an in-depth account of how the Tim Hunt saga developed into a furious online backlash against his critics, and escalated from casual sexism into a dangerous mix of racism, misogyny and political and cultural warfare.

The interesting part of this review is that while some are quick to blame a PC culture, what started as a civil rebuke of a sexist remark was enflamed into a conflagration of viciousness by the introduction of alt-right bigots like Yiannopoulos, Mensch, and gamergaters into the mix, and when they refocused the complaints about a safe, secure Nobel prizewinner onto a black woman journalist, all the racism and misogyny by others than Hunt was allowed to flower.

Isn’t this the same old schtick Ray Comfort has done before?

Matt Barber makes a hackneyed argument. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Those who deny the existence of their Creator are delusional.

This is not an insult. It’s not a personal attack. It’s not a pejorative.

It’s a fact.

They’re also “fools.”

It’s a fact, huh? Then I presume he’ll show me the evidence or reasoning. You will not be surprised to learn that his argument consists entirely of quoting the Bible.

[Read more…]