Triple nipple pubs!

One never knows where research might lead, and I’m not going to disparage work that attempts to quantify what seems to be a trivial and obvious conclusion. I do find it weird that such work can justify three (3) published papers, though, even if the three do have clearly different goals. Welcome to the world of women’s erect nipples.

The Point of Nipple Erection 1: The Experience and Projection of Perceived Emotional States While Viewing Women With and Without Erect Nipples

Given the research that suggests men attend to nipples and that nipple erection is triggered by sexual excitement (among other triggers), we questioned whether men see nipple erection as a sign of sexual interest. Our findings indicate that men (but not women) see women as sexier when they have nipple erection and also see themselves as sexier, supporting the idea that nipple erection is perceived signaling arousal or sexual interest.

The Point of Nipple Erection 2: The Effect of Nipple Erection on Intended and Expected Altruism

This study shows that men are more likely to do things for sexualized women, in this case, women with nipple erection. Women, however, would prefer to avoid women with nipple erection socially. This can have implications for sex and dating strategies, and female interaction in social settings.

The Point of Nipple Erection 3: Sexual and Social Expectations of Women With Nipple Erection

Nipple erection is a cue that triggers sexualization and objectification of women; women with nipple erection are thought of as less intelligent, less moral, and more promiscuous by both men and women. Women cannot control their nipple erection, yet these data show that it is used by men and women to make presumptions about women’s character and behavior.

I don’t usually notice such things because, you know, clothing, and it seems to me that clothing choice might be a stronger signal for all the things measured than involuntary smooth muscle contractions. Also, here in Minnesota, it might be more a product of being cold.

Then I read the methods. All three papers were based on a variant of this detail from the first paper.

Eighty-five men (average age 22.6 years,SD 7.33) and 355 women (average age 20.7years,SD 3.79) were surveyed. Participants were primarily White (83.4%) from a regional public university in the northeastern United States.

I recognize the pattern. Psych 101! You recruit the students from an introductory psychology course, give them a survey-based procedure, and then stat the hell out of the numbers you get. It’s the laziest kind of psych study. You’re quizzing young men and women about erect nipples in this case, and probably had no shortage of volunteers.

Then you publish it in a journal titled “Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences”, even though it has no evolutionary implications at all, and maybe, at best, measures socialized, conventional behavior in a single population of horny college-aged students with a mundane protocol designed more for the convenience of the investigators rather than probing deeply into the basis of the behavior. Come on, psychologists, do better. At least sample multiple diverse populations before making conclusions about human behavior.

It is rather depressing that one result is that showing signs of arousal is interpreted to mean a person is less intelligent and more promiscuous. Human beings, do better.

There are barbarians and savages on our southern border!

They are called “Texians” or “Texans” or something like that. They are a cruel and nasty people who have just announced a set of brutal laws.

It is now open season on brown-skinned people.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has invoked the Invasion Clauses of the U.S. and Texas Constitutions to formally declare illegal immigration at the state’s Mexico border an invasion. In a letter sent out Monday, Abbott notified county judges along the Texas-Mexico border that he will “fully authorize Texas to take unprecedented measures to defend our state against an invasion.” The recently reelected governor also shared portions of the letter on Twitter Tuesday morning.

In the letter, Abbott outlined steps that will be taken by the state under his constitutional authority to “keep the state and country safe,” which include deploying the National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest and turn away immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, building a border wall along counties on the border, deploying gun boats to secure the border, entering agreements with other U.S. states and foreign powers to enhance border security, and providing resources for border counties to increase their efforts to respond to the border “invasion.”

They’ve progressed from immigrants and refugees to illegals to, now, “invaders” which now requires armed Nation Guard units and gunboats to fend off. He has officially declared it an invasion that requires mobilizing military force. Look at these scary “invaders”!

The one thing that might spare us the savagery of the Texians is that they are also a chickenshit people who wet their pants in terror at the sight of brown children and the sound of Spanish.

But there’s more! They’ve also filed a bill, HB672, that criminalizes gender affirming care. If parents support their trans kids, they can be arrested and thrown in prison, and those kids would then be rounded up and place in the care of a state that hates them.

Once again, for some mysterious reason, these Texas barbarians are terrified by children. Unfortunately, this means we Northern states might soon face a flood of families fleeing the oppression, and we’ll have to defend our borders with Texas…not with military might, but with aid services and food banks and relocation assistance and the dreaded social workers. We can’t build a wall, though, because we have to let people escape the misery that is Republicans of Texas.

The one worry is that there are forces at work in Greater America that want to turn all of the country into Little Craven Texas. One of the chief architects of such a belittling change just announced that he’s running for president yesterday, when he should be in jail or a mental institution. Don’t let the puling maggots of the Right win!

Kari Lake, loser

I wasn’t convinced that Lake had actually lost — it was close! — but now I’m happy to accept it. Sean Hannity announced her defeat! That’s how you know it’s true, Fox News and its loud pundits will only accept reality grudgingly.

Don’t weep for Ms Lake, though, I’m sure she has a profitable and angry future in front of her as another shrieking voice of resentment on one of those conservative news networks.

Never mind the tumbrels, bring on the lawyers

Here’s an interesting tactic for destroying billionaires: sue them for cheating. You can’t get that rich without stealing the money somehow, so if you find evidence of tax fraud, sic a bunch of ravening lawyers on them. Michael Saylor is finding that out.

Michael Saylor amassed a multibillion-dollar fortune, splurging to combine three Georgetown penthouses into a palatial 7,000-square-foot residence, snapping up a 154-foot yacht dubbed Mr. Terrible and throwing lavish soirees including one where he was draped with an albino python.

All the while, the tech titan did not pay income tax in the District for years and bragged about it to friends, anonymous whistleblowers allege. They said he told people they were “fools” if they did not buy a home in Florida as he did and claim to live there. The state has no income tax.

He’s rich. He flaunts it. He owns 5 yachts and multiple mansions. He doesn’t pay any taxes because he’s found loopholes, such as by buying a mansion in Florida (no income tax in Florida!) and then claiming that’s his primary residence. By enforcing tax laws, people can claw back a fraction of his ill-gotten wealth, at least.

The key to forcing a billionaire to cough up is to enable citizens to hunt him down and cut a bounty out of his hide.

All told, Racine alleges Saylor failed to pay at least $25 million in income taxes, but he could owe much more. D.C. law allows the city to collect triple the owed amount in damages, along with assorted interest, fees and penalties. Racine said in the interview he hopes to recover more than $100 million from Saylor. The whistleblowers would keep 15 to 25 percent if and when any money is recovered.

It’s all down to a new law in Washington DC.

These False Claims Act laws are modeled on a Civil War-era federal statute that has helped return billions to federal coffers, but the federal law bars action on tax fraud, and most states have followed that lead in their statutes.

D.C. switched that up with its new False Claims Act, which went into effect in 2021 and allows whistleblowers to pursue cases in which the alleged fraudster has income of more than $1 million and damages collected will exceed $350,000. At first it was little known outside wonky tax circles.

They’re going to have to work fast, though, because Saylor’s wealth is built on cryptocurrency, and has repeatedly vaporized. Crypto is currently facing its own reckoning, and Saylor lost $1.4 billion just recently. They might end up dragging a pauper into court.

That’s the real crime, not only tax dodging but making all of his money with this venal Ponzi scheme called bitcoin. That’s the greater crime, that crypto is a tool for scraping money out of gullible investors — and PENSION FUNDS???? Jesus. I would hope my pension isn’t being thrown away on something like that.

In October 2021, one of Quebec’s largest pension funds — the Caisse de Depot et Placement du Québec — invested $150 million into the crypto-lending company called the Celsius Network — which may now be facing bankruptcy.

That same month, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) announced its investment in FTX Trading Ltd, supplying at least $50 million into a meme-inspired fundraising round — raising $420.69 million from 69 investors. FTX hasn’t crashed like Celsius Network just yet, but the investment is putting teacher pensions in danger.

That quote is from July. FTX recently crashed, as expected. Sorry, Ontario teachers.

Talking about evidence

Have you ever noticed that Christians and creationists have a weird obsession with something they clearly don’t understand? Josh McDowell, J. Warner Wallace, Lee Strobel…they’ve built careers around writing books that purport to provide “evidence” for Jesus, yet when you look at the cases they make, they fall apart pathetically. Let’s talk about what good evidence is on Thursday.

But what if all of my students are hot?

They are, every single one of them. Even the ones I don’t see because they’re just a black rectangle on Zoom. Apparently, though, attractive girls’ grades suffered when we moved to online courses because they couldn’t appeal to professor’s biases.

It’s a garbage study, though, as Rebecca Watson explains. The paper claims that…

As education moved online following the onset of the pandemic, the grades of attractive female students deteriorated. This finding implies that the female beauty premium observed when education is in-person is likely to be chiefly a consequence of discrimination. On the contrary, for male students, there was still a significant beauty premium even after the introduction of online teaching. The latter finding suggests that for males in particular, beauty can be a productivity-enhancing attribute.

I don’t understand the mechanism behind that — so we have some kind of radar that senses hot men even over wi-fi, but that fails when we try to detect hot women? How is “beauty” a productivity-enhancing attribute?

Did the author consider the possibility that all of our students and professors have been experiencing great strains over the last few years? Deciding that the one decisive parameter was what they look like seems exceptionally reductive.

Then I had to wonder how the scored “beauty”, and it turns out the author just scavenged up photos on social media, had a couple of students look at them, and rate them. This seems rather arbitrary, and dependent on biases by the judges, as well as accidents of photography. I know I hate it when people take candid shots of my face before I’ve put my makeup on, and also, I don’t know about you, but I automatically deduct 2 points from any photo in which the subject is making pouty duck lips. Sorry.

Final gross error: he included enough detail about the subjects that they could in some cases tell what their score was…and their grades. Oh, and big problem, there was no informed consent, none of the students knew they had been incorporated into this “study”.

The author, Adrian Mehic, is an economist, so I’d already be suspicious of his psychological/sociological study, but the ethics violations and the ridiculous conclusion he draws (“attractive women get better grades because they’re being unfairly advantaged”) confirms that this is a dumpster fire of a paper, constructed out of a thoroughly p-hacked grab bag of fuzzy data.

Get your flu shot

The omens suggest it’s going to be a rough season.

Flu season is here — and early red flags suggest it’s on track to be very, very bad. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Flu View report show extraordinarily high numbers of positive flu tests reported to the agency from labs around the US. As of November 5, nearly 14,000 positive flu tests had been reported, as shown in the orange line on the below chart. That’s more than 12 times the number reported at the same time in 2019 (shown in the black line).

Combined with COVID-19 and RSV, I’m anticipating a lot of hospitals are going to be clogged up, so don’t get sick for any reason. Just stay healthy. Vaccines will help.

You know what else would help? Masking. That seems to be a lost cause right now, unfortunately.

Wow, I guess that last election was more devastating than I thought

I thought the 2022 elections were rather good news, not great, but the Democrats did a little better than expected, and there’s some faint hope that our “liberal” party was going to wake up to the importance of talking about the issues that matter. We didn’t dig ourselves into a deeper hole, and maybe, if we keep working at it, we can someday reverse the descent that began in the 1980s.

Alas, poor Michael Voris. He has taken the outcome hard. Now he declares that the four pillars of his worldview — America, the Military, Notre Dame, and the Church — have been shattered. His hate group, the Church Militant will persevere, but he’s fighting a rear-guard action while playing Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” as we slide down the slippery (lubricated with gay lube and the blood of babies) slope to Hell, all because the Republicans failed to take the senate this time.

[cue Sad Trombone and teeny-tiny violin]

Look on the bright side, Michael. He announced a while back that he’d lived the wild life in his thirties, and made a public confession.

Whatever the matter, I will now reveal that for most of my years in my thirties, confused about my own sexuality, I lived a life of live-in relationships with homosexual men. From the outside, I lived the lifestyle and contributed to scandal in addition to the sexual sins. On the inside, I was deeply conflicted about all of it. In a large portion of my twenties, I also had frequent sexual liaisons with both adult men and adult women.

He consecrated specifically my chastity to Our Blessed Mother. Well, there’s no point to that anymore, America is dead, the military is full of liberals, Notre Dame has become theologically insane, and the church is corrupt, so get out there and party like a mad man!