Keep talking, Herschel Walker

The man running for the office of dumbest politician in America has put out another ad, this time slamming trans athletes…right after the Club Q shooting. It’s not just the bad timing, but also that he has teamed up with Riley Gaines, the indignant transphobe, which opens the door to sick burns.

Barely a day after a deadly LGBTQ bar shooting killed two transgender people and three other patrons, Georgia senatorial candidate Herschel Walker (R) released a campaign ad slamming trans athletes. Democrats are pointing to Republican anti-LGBTQ campaigns like Walker’s as the type of rhetoric that led to the murder of five people at Colorado Springs bar Club Q on Saturday night.

The video featured Riley Gaines, a self-described 12-time NCAA All-American swimmer. In March, Gaines tied for fifth place with trans swimmer Lia Thomas. Gaines has been complaining about it ever since.

Fifth place. She’s complaining about having to share a teeny-tiny footnote in a record book with a trans woman. That’s a photo of two cranky losers up there.

Be anti-woke, go broke

Peter Thiel funded it. Candace Owens promoted it. I had never heard of this GloriFi bank until it collapsed.

It’s whole deal was that it was “anti-woke,” whatever that means. Since it was run by a gang of rabid capitalists who didn’t know what “woke” means, that doesn’t matter. What it really was was an ideologically driven attempt to prove that conservative principles were profitable and practical. They weren’t.

As The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on GloriFi’s shuttering, puts it, the business was “anti-woke.” While GloriFi itself never publicly described itself as anti-woke, the company had no qualms about marketing itself as a service provider for right-wing America. In a July press release, the company described itself as “a pro-freedom, pro-America, pro-capitalism technology company . . . empowering members to put their money where their values are and preserve the Country they believe in.”

In other words, its foundation was built on far-right paranoia and their bizarre obsessions.

Pitching itself as a financial institution that allowed one to be “free to celebrate your love of God and country without fear of cancellation,” GloriFi’s marketing read more like a campaign ad than an enticing APR offer on a new credit card. Highlights from the “about us” page include: “OUR BILL OF RIGHTS IS NON-NEGOTIABLE” and “WE ARE ONE NATION UNDER GOD.”

In its short tenure GloriFi, managed to launch checking and savings accounts as well as credit cards, with plans to offer mortgages and insurance in a future that will no longer take place. Founder and CEO Toby Neugebauer pitched plans to offer gun owners discounts on home insurance, credit cards made of shell casing material, and assistance paying legal bills if customers shot someone in self-defense. Over the summer, GloriFi secured conservative commentator Candace Owens as a co-founder and spokesperson for the brand.

Guys. Guys. GUYS. I know this is news to you, but regular banks won’t cancel your account if you announce that you love god and America. That’s not a sound basis for differentiating yourself from the competition. In fact, it makes you look weird, and especially stuff like the special privileges for gun-owners and people who shoot other people was probably counter to profitability. Having a controversial freak like Candace Owens (what? Laura Loomer was unavailable?) as the face of your company didn’t project seriousness, either.

Predictably, it imploded.

But GloriFi was unable to translate ideological grandstanding into functional corporate management. Even before its public launch, the startup was plagued by reports of chaos amongst staff and financiers. GloriFi missed its planned launch date several times, at one point due to clashes with Texas financial regulators. Reports emerged of unpaid invoices and erratic behavior from Neugebauer, who had converted his home Dallas mansion into the company’s main office.

According to the Journal, the company was eventually forced to hire a law firm to investigate workplace issues, particularly around Neugebauer. In one memo reviewed by the Journal, GloriFi’s former Head of Human Resources Britt Amos described several employees at Neugebaur’s mansion telling him to “make sure I leave around six,” and explaining that “after 5 p.m. Toby starts drinking and things at the house deteriorate quickly.” Amos also described a meeting where a visibly drunk Neugebauer was “drinking Red Bull and putting alcohol in it.”

You know, being “woke” just means you’re aware of the social shortcomings of the existing system, and are concerned about fairness and equality. Declaring yourself “anti-woke” implies that you’re ignorant of reality and want a system that will screw people over, things I do not want in a financial institution.

Maybe I should try changing restaurants

We decided to splurge on Chinese take-out tonight, and of course we got a fortune cookie. I opened mine up, and this is what it said:

If money really changes everything, then maybe you should try changing the money.

Say what? I’ve seen cryptic fortunes before, but this one was particularly puzzling. And stupid. I scratched my head over it a bit, thinking, “but does money really change everything?” and “how do I change the money? You mean like getting a roll of quarters?” Then I wondered what this has to do with me, or any customer for vegetable fried rice.

Then I flipped it over.

[Read more…]

Yet another Twitter alternative

I tried out Hive Social. I don’t think I like it much yet.

What is Hive Social? It’s like a mashup of Twitter and Instagram, with a dash of MySpace. It offers the simplicity of Twitter before it went down the drain, puts a bit more emphasis on images like Instagram (or at least before video), and you can even add music to your profile. It’s interesting and certainly a bit easier to use than Mastodon.

Simplicity is good — it has a simple chronological timeline, none of that algorithmic crap that just gets in the way. That “dash of MySpace” isn’t appealing at all, nor is the melding with Instagram and emphasis on images. Mastodon is really easy to use, I’ve never understood how people can complain about its difficulty.

But here’s the deeply off-putting part, for me. You get on, and it’s just a wall of images. Not text, not words, none of the stuff I’d prefer. What I immediately see is selfie culture, picture after picture of attractive young twenty-somethings showing off their makeup and posing game, and I don’t want to click further. I mean, that’s all fine, I think it’s fabulous for the younglings to thrive and have fun on social media, it’s just not for me, and we grizzled old people don’t belong at that party.

If I were to join in and felt obligated to flaunt my beauty, it would be nothing but spider photos, and it would be another place where I don’t fit in at all.

All you beautiful people would be less uncomfortable than I’d be, so try it out. It’s mobile only, so you’ll have to rummage around on your phone to find it. I’ll just lurk for now, as is appropriate for a homely old person, I guess. Maybe it will grow on me.

High heels vs AR15, guess who won

It was an epic battle in Club Q: one hateful gunman inflamed with the rhetoric of conservative pundits versus a room full of unarmed dancers and partiers, and one guy who took action, Richard Fierro.

As he looked up from the floor, Fierro spotted the shooter’s body armor and instead of running from the attacker, moved toward him, grasped the body armor, then stripped suspected gunman Anderson Aldrich of his rifle and beat him bloody with it.

“I grabbed the gun out of his hand and just started hitting him in the head, over and over,” Fierro told the Times, describing a scuffle in which he found himself atop the 300-something pound gunman, who had momentarily lost his grip on his rifle. “I just know I have to kill this guy before he kills us.”

He said he enlisted the help of another patron, Thomas James, to secure the rifle so it was out of reach of their attacker.

He also enlisted the help of a drag performer from the club, asking them to kick the gunman. The performer, he said, “stuffed a high-heeled shoe in the attacker’s face.”

That was so satisfying to read. That’s what we all need to do, fight back against the gutless cowards.

An important part of the heroism, though, is that Richard Fierro was at that club with his family because he loves the lgbtq community, wants to support their businesses, and enjoyed their company. He’s on the side of light.

His wife also made a statement.

With an incredibly heavy and broken heart we lost Raymond, who had been a part of our lives since our daughter was in high school. Raymond was Kassy’s boyfriend. We are going to miss him and his bright smile so much. We are going through a lot of emotions as a family and as a brewery. The loss of lives and the injured are in our hearts. We are devastated and torn. We love our #lgbtq community and stand with them. This cowardly and despicable act of hate has no room in our lives or business.

I’m proud that this family is on our side. Also disgusted at the Tucker Carlsons and Chaya Raichiks and all the Christian evangelicals who have been encouraging the hate for so long

Who is a greater danger to society?

Person the first, Travis Clark, a defrocked priest who was arrested for having consensual relations with two sex workers in a Catholic church:

A former Catholic priest who was arrested in 2020 after a passerby saw him and two dominatrices having sex on the altar of Pearl River church pleaded guilty Monday to a single count of felony obscenity. Travis Clark listened to 22nd Judicial District Judge Ellen Creel read the elements of the obscenity statute at the courthouse in Covington. Clark, 39, received a suspended prison sentence and will serve probation.

Clark and two women, Mindy Dixon and Melissa Cheng, were arrested in September 2020 after a passerby noticed lights on at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Pearl River. The witness saw Clark, partially naked, having sex with two women who were wearing corsets. When police arrived, they seized sex toys, stage lights, a cell phone and the tripod-mounted camera.

Person the second, a fully frocked Gregory Aymond, who carried out magic rituals to erase the demonic presence of the sex workers, among the least of his silly superstitious acts:

New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond last appeared on JMG in October 2020 when he held a ritual burning of the altar upon which “demonic” dominatrices had filmed a three-way with a local priest in view of passersby.

Earlier in 2020 he appeared here when his archdiocese declared bankruptcy in the face of an avalanche of abuse lawsuits.

Also in 2020, Aymond flew aboard a World War II-era biplane on Good Friday to sprinkle holy water on New Orleans in order to stop the spread of coronavirus.

More seriously, he has defended pedophiles, opposed abortion, and wants gays back in the closet, the usual vile Catholic shit.

Which one scares you more?

I can tell it’s Thanksgiving week

How do I know? My class with 20 enrolled had an attendance of 4 in person and 3 over Zoom. Thirteen ghosts! I make it easy for them because in addition to the in-person and zoom option, I also record everything and put that online.

I do rather miss having students right there, interacting with the material. It limits what I can do.

Anyway, I can now say in good conscience that I won’t be lecturing on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, because I know from past experience that hardly anyone will show up. Wednesday will be a play day, I’ve got a few science-related games I’ll bring in. If no one at all shows up, I’ll go hang out with my spiders for a while. They love me, at least.

Also, the second worst day for attendance is the Friday of deer hunting season, which hits in early November.

Twitter & entropic decay

Moderation matters. It’s human nature that some people don’t grow out of their immaturity and find satisfaction in destroying things, splattering obscenities everywhere, and relishing being purposeless disruptors — it is, apparently, what gives their life meaning, since they are failures at everything else — so policing comments is necessary. That’ll never change for as long as some people savor being terrible human beings.

Elon Musk’s Twitter is being stripped of moderators, rules, and any vestige of sanity in what I can only interpret as self-destruction. Musk is one of those useless vandals who finds virtue in wreckage, and by removing any effective moderation, we’re going to see a steady decay of useful content. Twitter is becoming as lawless and unregulated as Facebook, and now people are rushing to insert misinformation…now blessed with the sacred Blue Checkmark, which can be obtained by anyone for a mere $8/month.

Under Elon Musk’s new direction for Twitter, several anti-vaccine accounts with tens of thousands of followers are now verified by paying $7.99 a month for Twitter Blue.

Hey, if I were a quack trying to sell patent medicines that haven’t been tested and don’t work, that’s what I’d do: pay a pittance for a shingle I could hang for my dangerous advertising, so I could pretend to be a legitimate authority, and that’s what they’re doing.

But the tools are now being used to create a false sense of validity in order to spread dangerous falsehoods, including about vaccines. And groups on other platforms, like Facebook, continue to circumvent moderation by making minor changes to their names and the terms they use to promote anti-vaccine agendas.

Verified accounts are frequently seen as reliable and trustworthy, and Twitter’s algorithm gives them a higher ranking in search results, replies and follow recommendations.

“There’s a sense of legitimacy that comes with it,” said Barry. “By verifying this anti-vaccine account, they’re kind of verifying all of the misinformation it shares … it makes people think, ‘Oh, well, this is a verified account. This must be true.’”

They’re lying to circumvent any restraints on their propaganda, and they openly admit it! Machines can’t detect spotlights in a those silly robot verification tests on the internet, they sure can’t see a cunning liar, like this guy who is determined to spread vaccine misinformation on Facebook. Twitter is just lying there with its immune system demolished, it’s becoming as riddled with this nonsense as Facebook.

Facebook group admins, like Tiago Henrique Fernandes, reconstitute banned groups by using slightly different names, like DSN Official instead of Died Suddenly News, while keeping the same focus on anti-science messages.

Fernandes coaches members not to write certain words that will be picked up by moderators, he explained on a recent show produced by Children’s Health Defense.

Facebook’s algorithms look for keywords – like vaccine, shot and mRNA – to flag potential problems.

“I basically train the members to … get away from that kind of language and get more into undercover, what I call ‘carnival talk’ – that way the algorithms can’t figure it out,” he said.

Group members often refer to the vaccines as food – “cookie”, “peaches”, “cheeseburger” – or use purposeful misspellings, especially for purported side-effects like seizures (“see jures”) or cancer (“can sir”).

One phrase that is picking up steam in the anti-vax world is “died suddenly”, which may be used in official media reports to talk about any sudden death, making it harder to moderate automatically.

This is one of the reasons I bailed out of Facebook — too much garbage being peddled to profit Mark Zuckerberg, and too many stupid or evil people thriving in the stew of dishonesty. Next on the social media chopping block: the disintegrating carcass of Twitter, which is now making life easy for frauds.

The vaccines to prevent severe disease and death from Covid-19 are extremely safe and effective, with millions of people around the world vaccinated.

Even so, anti-vaccine propaganda has increased dramatically during the pandemic. Anti-vaccine activists “were prepared for a pandemic to happen”, and they were prepared to exploit it, Barry said.

Verifying anti-vax accounts and elevating their messages on social networks further entrenches anti-vaccine ideology in our culture, Barry said. “Anything that further legitimizes them, the extent of their influence gets even worse, and people don’t even realize that the origin of it is anti-vax.”

I’m afraid it’s more than passive neglect that’s creating the ongoing deterioration, though. I’m convinced that Elon Musk didn’t buy Twitter to save it, he can’t possibly be that stupid (or can he?) I think it was an active act of vandalism. He loves the attention he gets on the site, but simultaneously hates that it opens him up to criticism, so he’s destroying it in a stupid act of self-immolation. How else to explain that he’s letting anti-vaxxers flourish, has allowed Donald Trump and Jordan Peterson to return, and has let James Lindsay out of his cage?

There’s no reason for any of it, except to accelerate the descent into crepitude. It’s surprising because he didn’t have to spend $44 billion to do that, entropy and competition would have disintegrated it eventually, like MySpace, but he seems to be rushing to do in weeks or months what would have normally taken years or decades.

Could he please buy Facebook next?