We’ll be talking about moderation. I’m pro-moderation — where do you stand on it?
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
We’ll be talking about moderation. I’m pro-moderation — where do you stand on it?
It’s the last day of finals week. I have two final exams and a term paper due — and I foolishly made everything due at 6pm this evening. Everything. All at once. I am smart, S-M-R-T.
A few students have submitted their work early so I can try to get a leg up on all the grading. Grades are due on Monday, so there’s an absolute deadline to finishing up this semester.
Last night, CNN hosted a town hall for Trump. I didn’t watch it. My trust in the that news outlet was already low, but after they announced they were going to host this debacle, I’m writing the network off. The town hall was a catastrophe for the truth.
Donald Trump’s long-awaited return to CNN went off the rails almost immediately on Wednesday night, with the former president using the exclusive town hall event to repeatedly lie, mislead viewers, and steamroll CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins—all to the delight of a Trump-adoring crowd.
From the very first seconds of the town hall, Trump was lying. When Collins opened the event with a softball—“Why should Americans put you back in the White House?”—Trump immediately leaned into his normal election lies. He repeated debunked theories and passionately argued the election was stolen.
When he got his first question from the crowd—Will you suspend the “polarizing” talk about election fraud?—a question that had already been answered in the first minute of the town hall, Trump just pushed forward with more disproven election falsehoods.
Collins, by the way, was recruited from Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller. The CNN executives had to know she was a poor choice, on top of knowing that Trump was going to lie non-stop, and that his audience was going to love it. They figured it out partway through (I knew what was going to happen last week when I heard about this nonsense — put me in charge of CNN, already, I’m smarter than anyone there.)
Halfway through the town hall, CNN staffers were acknowledging the event was a disaster for the truth.
“This is so bad,” one of CNN’s on-air personalities told The Daily Beast before the first commercial break. “I was cautiously optimistic despite the criticism… it is awful. It’s a Trump infomercial. We’re going to get crushed.”
“One of the worst hours I’ve ever seen on our air,” another CNN staffer told The Daily Beast.
And yet another on-air commentator for CNN was clear this wasn’t a good night for the cable news channel. “I’m floored by this whole evening,” this person said.
Right now, analysts at the network are reading over the viewership stats, and if this hour of non-news and MAGA propaganda was popular, you can expect to see lots more of it for the next year and a half.
Wait, I just realized the presidential race has already begun, and is going to go on interminably. Another reason to turn CNN off.
Fuck all of these guys.
Started a big project today — we have a fate in mind for all these spiders my lab is churning out. It will be an interesting fate for me, but alas, not at all healthy for the spiders. I’ll be keeping my Patreon followers informed, the rest of you will have to wait until the Fall.
I’m going to be redoubling my spider farming efforts for a while. I literally had baby spiders nesting in my beard this morning, and I just now had one crawl out of my shirt cuff. It’s a good thing I like the little fellas. Which makes it sad that this kind of a meatgrinder project. I’m going to be the Cruella DeVille of spiders.
Ray Troll has come out with a line of fabrics.
Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t know how to sew, because you know I would not exercise restraint and would emerge in a fabulously garish wardrobe.
No. Not at all.
Here’s a video that looks at him from the perspective of his professional duties. You won’t be surprised either at how bad he was at his job, both teaching and clinical work.
One of the excuses I’m seeing from defenders of Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow is the claim that Crow was being generous and kind and you don’t want to discourage people from being kind, do you? Dahlia Lithwick is having nothing to do with that.
There’s also something specifically infuriating about the way defenders of the deep spiritual kinship between Harlan Crow and Clarence and Ginni Thomas root their argument in the fact that paying for an at-risk youth’s private school tuition is a noble act—“charity” even. The problem with that is, this is a conservative legal movement that is racing to subvert voting, public education, the administrative state, and (at present) the possibility of student loan forgiveness. So Harlan Crow’s replacement of an entire New Deal safety net with an ad hoc charitable benefits system administered by himself and directed only at the offspring of personal friends is specifically infuriating. Because the kids who receive the generosity of the Crow’s private charity are not yours, and the kids who receive the protections of EPA regulation are not yours, and the kids who receive the benefits of going to schools where nobody will shoot them are not yours. The beauty of Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow is that they always get to determine who benefits—and guess what? Unless and until you are related to a sitting Supreme Court justice: It will be not you.
The lesson we are learning from the new scandals at the high court go way beyond “ethics” reform. This is no longer an ethics problem. This is a democracy reform problem, and it signals first and foremost an effort to deform democracy to serve the Harlan Crows and the Leonard Leos of the world. It also signals a view of democracy in which they will determine whose private life is private and who are the “gossips.” (You may still know them as “journalists.”)
Right, let’s replace the social safety net with crony capitalism. That’s not generosity, that’s selfishness.
Trump was found guilty of sexual assault on E. Jean Carroll, but keep in mind that this was a civil trial, not a criminal case, so he can’t be punished with jail time, only a fine. A $5 million fine. It will do nothing.
His audience of gullible authoritarian morons won’t care.
He’s going to continue his run for the presidency.
The media will continue to treat him as a serious politician, and court his approval.
It’s a moral victory, but Republicans don’t care about morality.
Welcome!
(WARNING! Ghastly scenes of carnivores butchering animals ahead!)
Thanks to Akira MacKenzie for dropping this horror into a vegetarian’s comment section (it’s OK, I’m a biologist, I’ve done and seen worse.)
I should show this video to all the new students next year and let them know where the college president’s expertise lies.
I have realized that the way I raise spiders, in a plastic container with a 2-dimensional wooden frame assembled from coffee stirrers and hot glue, means that the spiders build cobwebs constrained to only 2 dimensions. Now I’m thinking it would be easier to study the rules they use to make these networks. Hmm…another student project?
This photo was shot with my iPhone. I think I could get something better with my Canon R and a lens opened wide, to f/1.4 or thereabouts, and a dark background set way back and out of focus. I may have to do some photography experiments.
