Are they unable to find candidates without misogynistic traits?

I’ve avoided discussing Graham Platner here all this time. I could tell early in his rise that his campaign was going to be an ugly mess that was going to tempt a lot of good people to support him. Bernie Sanders endorsed him!

Right away, I thought “Are there no working class progressive candidates in Maine who don’t sport a Nazi tattoo?”

Then there were the old internet posts, and I thought, “Are there no working class progressive candidates in Maine who don’t have a history of internet bigotry?”

Then we got the accounts of crude drunken behavior on dates, and I thought, “Are there no working class progressive candidates in Maine who don’t treat women with disrespect?”

Now the latest damning accusation has emerged, prompting Platner to finally drop out, and I thought, “Are there no working class progressive candidates in Maine who haven’t raped someone?”

So I was useless on this issue, because I was too busy backing away from this growing clusterfuck. Rebecca Watson has a more forthright response.

Let’s learn to more quickly recognize disqualifying characteristics in our candidates, OK? How about if we don’t make excuses for them anymore?

Darwin came up with memetics?

Oh boy, chew on this comment on my YouTube channel:

@Toytime-TV
I Got you PZ…It goes like Yah, Darwin noticed adaptation and developed an expansive theory to encompass his study of that progress in an attempt to understand the nature and origin of creation because the vastness of his theory held millennia of time spans causing him see patterns and repetition throughout the ages, which caused him to then develop the theory of memetics, which sir truly is the language of the divine as it can only be understood over long periods of study, causing one to MUST believe in an Originator of the system of sequences he had uncovered. Most of your smartest people throughout all of time held the belief of a creator, even if they loosened the ideology and imagery. You can believe too PZ, being a smart man like you denotes, you must. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmgYIzpSGgk

Don’t bother with the included link: it’s just an old one-eyed man dancing. No real content.

This is somehow a reply to my video in which I said that evolution wasn’t simply made up by some guy, Darwin. The comment starts out OK, saying that Darwin developed a theory to explain what he observed in nature…but then they go on to say that Darwin invented memetics (not true, you can blame Dawkins for that one), and that it is a divine language and that you MUST believe it originated in a creator. I think we’ve all heard that before. Then they tell us that the smartest people throughout all of time held the belief of a creator, and concludes with a little flattery that being a smart man I must also believe.

I guess I’m not as smart as @Toytime believes, because that is a load of horseshit.

Another reason to have voted for Kamala

Just ask Doug Wilson.

“If Kamala [Harris] had won the presidency, there would have been basically zero evangelicals in the White House administration,” Wilson said. “And although Donald Trump is not an evangelical by any stretch … his administration is full of them.”

Doug has something in common with Richard Dawkins.

“So probably the best illustration of this would be church bells? Yes. Minarets? No,” he said.

Why?

“Because, the public space would belong to Christ,” he added.

He also doesn’t want women to vote, let alone run for high office.

Wilson also wants to repeal women’s right to vote. When asked why, he was quick to respond.

“Because it’s a good idea,” he said, adding that he wants it replaced with household voting, with women only voting if they are the head of their household.

I voted for Kamala Harris. It’s nice that a pig like Doug Wilson is reassuring me that my vote was righteous.

Jeanson sinking deeper into the swamp

Portrait of a pseudoscientist

Nathaniel Jeanson, that incompetent “geneticist” who was employed by Answers in Genesis, has a new gig: he has been hired by Columbia International University as a visiting research professor. This is not a step up in prominence. It’s actually kind of a step backwards, but the creationists will crow about the words without recognizing the meaning.

A “visiting research professor” is often a prestigious appointment, but it’s not an effective research position — it’s more of an attempt to bring a big name into connection with a university, and possibly forge new partnerships (Note: Jeanson is not a big name, except to the intellectually impoverished creationist community.) I’d be interested to know what the quid pro quo here might be, because he’s not going to improve the reputation of CIU.

Curiously, if you read that announcement from CIU, there’s no reference to Answers in Genesis anywhere in it. They name-drop Harvard and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, but the noisy loud creationist/Christian organization that has been associated with him for years? Not a whisper.

It’s unclear what they are going to accomplish with this appointment. He is still employed at AiG, they don’t discuss what his teaching duties will be, other than just talking to students. This is purely an attempt to swap titles and connections, but CIU is going to do this without openly acknowledging AiG.

This is also not going to help Jeanson’s career. CIU is a private Christian college that used to be called Columbia Bible College. It requires a whole lot of fundamentalist bullshit to graduate from there.

There are seven doctrinal points which students must consent to as a part of their admission to and candidacy for a degree from CIU. These are biblical inspiration, natural separation of humanity from God, salvation by grace through faith in Christ, the historical doctrine of the Trinity, the bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the believer, and the evangelical mandate to witness to the gospel of Christ. The doctrine of Premillennialism is officially held by the school, but students are not required to adhere to this doctrine. CIU requires all teaching faculty to affirm Premillennialism.

That’s a fake school. It’s a Sunday School with delusions of grandeur.

Chlodnik night!

It’s unpleasantly hot and humid — we just had a thunderstorm drench us — so I decided to try something completely different and made chlodnik, a cold beet soup.

I found the recipe here. If you try it, caution: the proportions there are sufficient for a whole family of 6 or more. We’re going to have chlodnik oozing out of our pores for a few days. Next time I’ll cut everything in half.

The flavor is interesting. Imagine digging up everything in a Slavic peasant’s garden, chopping it up fine, and drowning it in yoghurt, kefir, and sour cream.

It’s cold, though, which was the important criterion.

We already knew Bryan Johnson was going to die someday

Remember Bryan Johnson? Here’s a reminder of his silly obsession.

Johnson famously claims to spend millions on his health each year, which goes towards keeping a personal army of doctors on hand who constantly monitor his biomarkers, and help carry out more unorthodox health interventions like swapping his blood out with his younger son’s and monitoring his nighttime boners (though he’s seemed to pare things back as of late).

Unfortunately, poor little Bryan is sick.

Bryan Johnson, in his quest for eternal youth, has been dealt a mortal blow.

Last week, the longevity-obsessed tech investor revealed that he had been diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease in which his “stomach is eating itself.”

He’s got autoimmune gastritis. It’s not a mortal illness, but it is a serious and uncomfortable chronic disease, nothing to be made light of. Pity him, but don’t plan the funeral just yet.

Besides, he’s going to turn this into a profit-making drama.

But, true to his mission, Johnson believes he can biohack his way out of this gut-punch, too.

“I’m going to try and solve it,” he wrote on X. “Will share all.”

The man is rich, he already spends millions of dollars on his health every year, and gastritis is a manageable illness. I’m pretty sure he’s going to live through this, it’s just become a significantly more uncomfortable process.

But someday, he will die.

Schrodinger’s McConnell

Mitch McConnell has been MIA for a few weeks. Credible sources say he’s been in the hospital since 14 June, “recovering”.

Laura Loomer says he is “brain dead” and never coming back.

Who are you going to believe? I think we’ve caught Loomer in a lie. McConnell is a Republican, if you’re going to say he’s brain dead, I’m going to ask, “how can you tell?”

Kalshi is not evidence. Shut the fuck up, Harry Enten

I really, really, really dislike Harry Enten, the annoyingly hyperkinetic weirdo on CNN who stands in front of an image board and waves at poll numbers and tells us how important they are. I despise all the poll nonsense on the news media — learn to talk about issues and policy rather than the horserace. Now it’s gotten even worse, because he’s not babbling about legitimate, credible polls, it’s all about numbers extracted from prediction markets, which are also paying the networks for promotion.

Since December, CNN has featured Kalshi in a segment called “The Odds” at least 115 times. In these segments, Harry Enten, CNN’s chief data analyst, frequently suggests that Kalshi predictions are more accurate than other sources. While polling relies on volunteers, Enten repeatedly reminds CNN viewers that prediction markets are driven by people who “put their money where their mouth is.”

On January 7, Enten highlighted that, in six days, the odds on Kalshi that the United States would buy part of Greenland by the end of Trump’s first term increased from 12% to 36%. Enten said this was proof that “the people putting their money where their mouth is” are “absolutely taking this seriously.”

“Whoa… way up there now to 36%,” Enten exclaimed. “A tripling in less than a week. My goodness gracious.”

Wishful thinking by gullible people is not evidence.

The good news is that some people are trying to take down these corrupt companies.

On Monday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed a total ban on futures trading platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. The Trump administration filed a lawsuit Tuesday to prevent the ban from going into place on Aug. 1, with the CFTC arguing its authority supersedes the state’s ability to regulate futures trading. Notably, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. is a strategic advisor for Kalshi and has invested in Polymarket through his venture capital firm.

You can tell that Kalshi and Polymarket are not to be trusted just by looking at the scumbags who are investing in it. They’re parasites all the way through. It makes me suspicious of the Young Turks that they are also taking Polymarket money.

These are just barely legal gambling sites. Let’s make them illegal.

P.S. There is no evidence that we are imminently going to get evidence that aliens exist.